Volumetric 3D Display for Radiation Therapy planning.pdf

JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 4, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008 437
Volumetric 3D Display for Radiation
Therapy Planning
Jason Geng, Senior Member, IEEE
(Invited Paper)
Abstract—In current clinical practice, radiation therapy plan- Index Terms—Interactive visualization, medical imaging, radia-
ning (RTP) has often been treated as a two-dimensional (2D) tion therapy planning, volumetric 3D display.
problem, mainly due to the limitations in visualization technology
available to date. The slice-by-slice display format makes it dif-
ficult to visualize the path of radiation beam not perpendicular I. INTRODUCTION
to the axis of the CT slices. This discourages consideration of
treatment plans that utilize radiation beam out of the transverse HIS paper documents our theoretical study and experi-
plane. Human body anatomical structures are inherently three-di- T mental demonstration of a revolutionary volumetric three-
mensional (3D) objects, and tumors and ans involved in dimensional (3D) display technique. We also present a frame-
the RTP are all of 3D shapes. A clear understanding of 3D spatial work for applying this true 3D display technology to radiation
relationships among these structures, as well as the anatomic
impact of 3D dose distributions, is essential for designing and therapy planning (RTP). Although we are still in the early stage
evaluating radiation therapy plans. of development, the ultimate goal of this investigation is to de-
We have recently made an important breakthrough in the high- velop a clinically viable volumetric 3D display technology for
resolution volumetric 3D display technology and have made an ini- medical image visualization in general.
tial attempt to apply it to RTP applications. By “volumetric 3D The proposed volumetric “life-like” 3D image display tech-
display,” we mean that each “voxel” in the displayed 3D images
is located physically at the ( ) spatial position where it is nique relies upon a display media th