Contour Lines to Assist Position Recognition of Slices in Transparent Stereoscopic Visualization of Medical Volume Data

Visualizing multiple slices of a human body is useful in 3D image diagnosis. It provides a useful tool for the patients and trainees and enables a more comprehensive understanding of the inner structure. Computer graphics (CG) is commonly used for medical data visualization. The stereoscopic effect of the CG data can be perceived using a stereoscopic display. However, for complex shape data, it is difficult to perceive and handle the spatial information correctly. In this study, we carried out experiments to investigate how to correctly arrange and visualize transparent slices in transparent volume data using a multi-view autostereoscopic display. We expect that correct position of the slices can be correctly perceived by visualizing contour lines of the slices which were arranged at regular intervals along the line of sight. As a result, we found that the depth-contrast effect occurs by drawing contour lines.