![](bg2.png)
We installed a PACS for student use at the
Biomedical Engineering Department of Eindhoven
University of Technology, the Netherlands. This
system contains an exhaustively complete set of
anonymized high resolution 2D and 3D medical
imaging datasets of a wide range of modalities,
primarily of normal subjects. The system has a fast
GPU based 3D viewing mode for huge datasets. As
such, it forms a rather unique, fully interactive
anatomy book.
2 LIFE SCIENCES VIEWING
ROOM
The acquisition of two PACS workstations from the
company Rogan Delft is made possible by a
generous gift of the Eindhoven University Fund
(UFE). These two workstations, communicating
over a gigabit network with a 1 TB server-side
database, are set up in the so called Life Sciences
Viewing Room, which is given a prominent place in
the department. Both workstations consist of a
powerful pc with 4 GB RAM and an NVidia GTX
8800 graphics card (GPU). The data can be viewed
using three professional Eizo medical displays: two
Radiforce G22 monitors (black-and-white, 10 bit
colordepth, 2 megapixel) and one Radiforce R22
color display.
Figure 2: 3D view of the carotid arteries with severe
stenosis. CT data. Courtesy: 3mensio Inc.
The high graphical performance of the workstations
allows software like 3viseon by the Dutch company
3mensio Medical Imaging BV to render astounding
volumes in real time on the GPU (Figure 2). This
adds a very special dimension to the system. The
students can interactively inspect any anatomical
part of the body, be it from CT or MRI data, zoom,
rotate, cut away views, fly through intestines or
blood vessels, do measurements, and act just like a
professional radiologist during his careful inspection
of the data. The system is also equipped with extra
software for grabbing movies of any screen action,
enabling the student to make promotional material
for his project presentation, or show these proudly at
home.
The two systems are located in the experimental lab
of the department, and are fulltime accessible. For
one of the systems a dedicated room is constructed
with dimmable lighting, and theatre sitting for 16
people, for discussions and presentations.
The medical 2D and 3D datasets are collected
from collaborating hospitals and industry, and from
general accessible databases on the internet,. The
system may currently be one of the most complete
interactive anatomy books around. The available
data are mostly of normals, with some pathology.
This serves the purpose of general viewing for the
students. If a project is done on e.g. heart valves,
these can be studied interactively and in full detail in
3D on the system. Next to medical data the system is
now filled with images from the life sciences—the
reason why the facility is calles Life Sciences
Viewing Room—such as microscopy from a wide
range of microscopes available in the Biomedical
Engineering Department (conventional light,
confocal, and 2-photon scanned laser microscopes),
and high field (6-9 Tesla) small bore MRI systems
for small animal imaging.
Two student assistants are appointed to fill the
system with relevant high resolution, high quality
data. The system now has a rather complete set of
anatomical areas, with many modalities, and is
growing. About 250 datasets are currently available.
The book Gray’s Anatomy is located on the user’s
desk for reference. The graphical user interface
(GUI, Figure 4) of the system is designed by these
assistants, enabling a first graphical selection on
anatomical region, then modality, then a specific
patient, and finally a specific dataset of that patient.
All data are in the standard DICOM format (DICOM
– Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine,
a universal standard adopted by the medical imaging
industry and community), and have been carefully
anonymized. To further prevent any chance of
recognizing the face of a patient, We exchange data
with a similar database in our sister BMIE School in
Shenyang, China. There, the 3D viewing and
manipulation software is based on the PACS viewer
of Neusoft Inc.
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
446