Coding for the storage and communication of visualisations of 3D medical data

The transmission of the large store of information contained in 3D medical data sets through limited capacity channels, is a critical procedure in many telemedicine applications. In this paper, techniques are presented for the compression of visualizations of 3D image data for e cient storage and transmission. Methods are rst presented for the transmission of the 3D surface of the objects using contour following methods. Alternately, the visualisation at the receiver may be based on a series of depth maps corresponding to some motion of the object, speci ed by the medical observer. Depth maps may be transmitted by using depth map motion compensated prediction. Alternately, a wire-mesh model of the depth map may be formed and transmitted by encoding the motion of its nodes. All these methods are used for the transmission of the 3D image with visualisation carried out at the receiver. Methods are also developed for e cient transmission of the images visualised at the encoder site. These methods allow remote interactive manipulation (rotation, translation, zoom) of the 3D objects, and may be implemented even if the receiver is a relatively simple and inexpensive workstation or a simple monitor. In all above cases, the coding of binocular views of the 3D scene is examined and recommendations are made for the implementation of coders of stereo views of 3D medical data. Subject Terms: 3D Data Compression; Medical Data Visualisation; Depth Map Transmission; Telemedicine Applications.