HTC Vive MeVisLab integration via OpenVR for medical applications

Jan Egger; Markus Gall; Jürgen Wallner; Pedro Boechat; Alexander Hann; Xing Li; Xiaojun Chen; Dieter Schmalstieg

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0173972

HTC Vive MeVisLab integration via OpenVR for medical applications

PLoS One. 2017 Mar 21;12(3):e0173972. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173972. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Jan Egger^{1

2}, Markus Gall¹, Jürgen Wallner³, Pedro Boechat³, Alexander Hann⁴, Xing Li⁵, Xiaojun Chen⁵, Dieter Schmalstieg¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 16c/II, Graz, Austria.
² BioTechMed-Graz, Krenngasse 37/1, Graz, Austria.
³ Medical University of Graz, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Auenbruggerplatz 5/1, Graz, Austria.
⁴ Department of Internal Medicine I, Ulm University, Albert-Einstein-Allee 23, Ulm, Germany.
⁵ Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

Virtual Reality, an immersive technology that replicates an environment via computer-simulated reality, gets a lot of attention in the entertainment industry. However, VR has also great potential in other areas, like the medical domain, Examples are intervention planning, training and simulation. This is especially of use in medical operations, where an aesthetic outcome is important, like for facial surgeries. Alas, importing medical data into Virtual Reality devices is not necessarily trivial, in particular, when a direct connection to a proprietary application is desired. Moreover, most researcher do not build their medical applications from scratch, but rather leverage platforms like MeVisLab, MITK, OsiriX or 3D Slicer. These platforms have in common that they use libraries like ITK and VTK, and provide a convenient graphical interface. However, ITK and VTK do not support Virtual Reality directly. In this study, the usage of a Virtual Reality device for medical data under the MeVisLab platform is presented. The OpenVR library is integrated into the MeVisLab platform, allowing a direct and uncomplicated usage of the head mounted display HTC Vive inside the MeVisLab platform. Medical data coming from other MeVisLab modules can directly be connected per drag-and-drop to the Virtual Reality module, rendering the data inside the HTC Vive for immersive virtual reality inspection.

Publication types

Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

Computer Graphics
Computer Simulation
Computer Systems
Equipment Design
Feasibility Studies
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Imaging, Three-Dimensional
Software
User-Computer Interface*

Grants and funding

The work received funding from BioTechMed-Graz in Austria (https://biotechmedgraz.at/en/, “Hardware accelerated intelligent medical imaging”), the 6th Call of the Initial Funding Program from the Research & Technology House (F&T-Haus) at the Graz University of Technology (https://www.tugraz.at/en/, “Interactive Planning and Reconstruction of Facial Defects”, PI: Jan Egger) and was supported by TU Graz Open Access Publishing Fund. Dr. Xiaojun Chen receives support by the Natural Science Foundation of China (www.nsfc.gov.cn, Grant No.: 81511130089) and the Foundation of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Grants No.: 14441901002, 15510722200 and 16441908400). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.