A virtual scalpel for visualizing patients in a three-dimensional, immersive, navigable and interactive virtual reality environment

Three dimensional tools for anatomical and radiological education for medical students are not novel. However, there has been limited ability to apply these tools into clinical practice. We speculate the reason for this situation is that although anatomical education software exists for a myriad of devices, and multiple applications exist for hand held devices, these platforms do not provide for intuitive correlation of clinical information from multiple diagnostic imaging procedures, nor do they provide users with any measure of prognostic capability. In this paper, we demonstrate the development of a virtual scalpel in the 3-D, immersive, navigable and interactive environment provided by a CAVE™. We propose that such an environment allows for the integrated visualization of medical images obtained from multiple radiological imaging platforms including CT, MRI, and PET. We intend to show such a system is advantageous not only for anatomical education but also for clinicians as a useful tool in surgical practice.