Improving Visual Communication for EIT-Based Lung Research

EIT (Electrical Impedance Tomography) is a novel imaging method visualizing impedance changes in the thorax mainly influenced by breathing and heart beating. Unfortunately, this technique has a poor image resolution. To improve the quality of EIT images, computer scientists and medical researchers are working together on the image reconstruction process of the data. As their background is different, there exist difficulties in the communication while assessing data and images. We provide a visualization of the thorax containing CT (Computer Tomography) and EIT images closing this gap. It is 3D, multimodal, semiabstract and suitable for both groups, and shows a rendered thorax volume with an embedded 2D EIT movie. The EIT image reconstruction contains several computational intermediate stages which are used to improve the volume rendering transfer function. Additionally, isosurfaces show context structures to understand spatial coherences more easily. The visualization is designed to be interactive and remove visual clutter to provide a direct view to the lung, which is the focus of interest. The results show that our visualization is able to give a basis for discussion for medical researchers as well as for computer scientists. Phenomena that have been discovered during long discussions are easier to detect. Furthermore it is possible to obtain new knowledge and address questions in terms of EIT.