Engineers Develop 3D Software to View Inside the Body

Utilizing video gaming technology, engineers have designed software that can look up to a video screen and use the device's buttons and joystick to fly through a patient's chest cavity for an up-close look at the bottom of the heart. They have modified a game controller to provide an accurate, three-dimensional (3D) view inside a patient's body accessible with a personal computer (PC), with a view doctors can shift, adjust, turn, zoom, and replay when required. The software uses real patient data from computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

Clinicians can use this technology to plan a surgery or a round of radiation therapy, and teach physiology and anatomy. The software, which was developed at Iowa State University (Ames, USA) to work helping doctors and patients, teachers, and students, is currently being marketed by an Ames, IA, USA startup company, BodyViz.com.

Two-dimensional imaging technologies have been used in medicine for quite a while, according to Dr. Eliot Winer, an Iowa State associate professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center. However, those flat images are not easily read and understood by anybody but specialists. "If I'm a surgeon or an oncologist or a primary care physician, I deal with patients in 3D,” Dr. Winer said.

Therefore, Drs. Winer and James Oliver, an Iowa State professor of mechanical engineering and director of the university's CyberInnovation Institute, began to develop technology that converts the flat images of medical scans into 3D images that are easy to see, manipulate, and understand. Thom Lobe, a pediatric surgeon based at Blank Children's Hospital (Des Moines, IA, USA), helped the engineers design a tool doctors could use.

A 2007 grant of US$110,000 from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a state economic development program, helped the three develop that technology into a commercial software product. The result is BodyViz.com, a startup company founded by the three and based at Iowa State's CyberInnovation Institute. The company is now marketing the software as "Simple, visual 3D.”

The company recently won the $25,000 top prize in the fourth annual John Pappajohn Iowa Business Plan Competition. Earlier this year, the company was named Outstanding Startup Company of the Year as part of the Technology Association of Iowa's Prometheus Awards.

The company has also been busy earning the required approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), developing a Web site and beginning to make sales, according to Curt Carlson, the company's president and chief executive officer. "This is a fantastic technology,” Mr. Carlson said. "More and more doctors are going down this path.”

Drs. Oliver, Winer, and Mr. Carlson like to quote a doctor who told a reporter that when preparing for complex procedures, "2D is guessing and 3D is knowing.”

"3D visualization is used all the time,” Dr. Winer said. "But for the medical field it's a paradigm shift. And once doctors understand the basics of our software, they don't understand how they lived without it.”

Moreover, Mr. Carlson reported that the software is a big hit in school biology classes. "It's fantastic to see the kids' eyes light up when they see this,” he said. "They're completely engaged when they see inside a body with this technology.”

Related Links:
Iowa State University
BodyViz.com