Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication

The 3D medical imaging market is over a half billion dollars and is headed for significant growth in the next 5 years, fueled by advances in imaging hardware capability, new diagnostic techniques and low cost, high performance graphics acceleration. CT virtual recontructions of the heart, virtual fly-throughs of the colon, and molecular imaging are just the start.

The 3D medical imaging market is over a half billion dollars and is headed for significant growth in the next 5 years, fueled by advances in imaging hardware capability, new diagnostic techniques and low cost, high performance graphics acceleration.

New 64 slice fast CT scanners representing 4th generation technology allow amazing 3D reconstructions of coronary (heart) artery vessels which are rivaling studies done by traditional and much more invasive techniques (coronary angiograms). Where a coronary angiogram involves having a cardiologist thread a catheter through your groin, CCTA (coronary CT angiography) involves having dye injected by a machine through an IV while being imaged in a CT scanner. Of course, invasive techniques cannot be avoided if a procedure such as angioplasty (crushing of plaque) or stenting (placing a tube in the area of a blockage) needs to be performed.

Virtual fly-throughs of the colon are beginning to replace the bane of every citizen on the verge of their golden years: the dreaded colonoscopy. A virtual colonoscopy doesn’t let you escape the cleansing prep, but you can avoid the endoscope up your bottom, along with the extra added expenses of the nurse, monitoring equipment, sedation and recovery time which come with it. Just hop into the CT scanner after drinking some barium the day before, get a small amount of air pumped in your colon from an enema tip and you are ready. Again, the invasive colonoscopy cannot be avoided if a procedure such as polyp removal or biopsy must be performed.

Another application driving the 3D medical imaging market is referred to as molecular imaging. This involves injecting a radiopharmaceutical that is absorbed by living cells to visualize blood flow, metabolic rate and other variables. Until now, fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has been the major isotope used in oncology and cardiology applications, but there are others being used and developed in other fields of medicine. When combined with CT (PET-CT) and 3D reconstruction, this becomes a very powerful tool that visualizes a combination of detailed anatomy and its functional state in 3D. PET-CT is becoming the tool of choice for diagnosis, staging and monitoring of many malignancies. (The profit per exam happens to be the highest of any imaging modality by almost 4 times).

So, 3D for medicine is here to stay. How does X3D fit in? Tune in to my next blog entry…