Medical Visualization Software Builds 2D Images Into 3D "Holograms"
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
Medicine is (thankfully) moving away from a time when incisions had to be made every time a physician needed to take a look at what was going on inside a patient. This began with CT and MRI technology but even those 2D solutions are being surpassed by newer technology that “extracts” 3D information from 2D sources.
According to Newsweek, companies like EchoPixel are working to take “3D information from flat slices.” Founder and CTO Sergio Aguirre details how his company’s work solves a key problem in the way doctors have been using and interpreting 2D images: “We found they are looking at flat image slices, and correlating between images, and in the process, forgetting what they are looking at ... they may forget a key feature that will lead them to lose important diagnostic information. It is a small mental lapse that’s happening from data overload.”
The Solution
To address this issue, EchoPixel has create medical visualization software that assembles 2D images into a 3D spatial structure and produces a “hologram” of the new, 3D images that hovers over a display board. They plan to eventually allow doctors (wearing special, 3D glasses) to lift a body part off the screen and zoom in on areas of interest with the freedom to rotate as needed.
Vendor Application
The software would be useful in medical schools, patient communication, and increasing diagnostic accuracy.
Healthcare providers will be especially interested in the results. Training trials of radiologists resulted in diagnosis times in visual colonoscopies cut from 30 minutes down to 5 to 10 minutes and an increase in identifying difficult-to-detect flat lesions of 20 percent. In a separate, Stanford University trial, radiologists saw improved surgical plans for major aortopulmonary collateral arteries, cutting surgery time from four hours to 1.5.
The platform has also been approved by the FDA for clinical use, and is installed at Stanford in San Francisco, Foxconn Technology Group, and the Cleveland Clinic. EchoPixel claims that the cost of the technology is comparable to and possibly cheaper than 2D workstations that are now standard in the industry.
Other Entrants
According to iHealthbeat, Zebra Imaging has introduced a holographic table-top that it believes will eventually serve as an alternative to cadavers in medical education. It has partnered with Zygote Media Group (a company that provides 3D anatomy models) to connect its technology with medical schools.