Designing 6DOF haptic transfer functions for effective exploration of 3D diffusion tensor fields

Rapid dissemination of DT-MRI devices has evoked intensive research to come up with effective methods for grasping the structural features of acquired 3D diffusion tensor fields. In this paper, we further explore the potential of haptization in conjunction with visualization to represent different levels of information on the DT-MRI datasets. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a sophisticated method for utilizing diffusion-based tractography textures mapped on cross-sections to visualize local structures such as nerve tracts, together with appropriate 6DOF haptic transfer functions to haptize elementary diffusion properties. We illustrate the effectiveness of a prototype system featuring a PHANToM Premium 3.0 with an application to a practical DT-MRI human brain dataset.