A. Matani et al., A SYSTEM FOR SUPERIMPOSING A 3-DIMENSIONAL STEREOSCOPIC MOTION ECHO IMAGE OF THE HEART ONTO THE CHEST, JPN J A P 1, 35(5B), 1996, pp. 3121-3125
In medical ultrasonic measurements, 5-dimensional reconstruction of su
ccessive B-mode images is widely used for the macroscopic observation
of organs or fetuses. To understand the 3-dimensional images, a stereo
display viewed with special glasses (having liquid crystal shutters)
and special observation techniques (cross viewing, parallel viewing) h
ave been previously proposed. In this paper, we proposed a system for
superimposing a 3-dimensional stereoscopic motion echo image of the he
art onto the chest of the subject. A see-through head-mounted display
was used for merging the virtual image (3-dimensional heart image) and
the real scene (the subject). By the comparing this system with previ
ous ones, the superiority of this system was confirmed in both the res
olution of the 5-dimensional heart image and the ease of observation o
f the image. This system allows observation of the 5-dimensional heart
image within the chest of the subject as if looking into the body. In
the near future, this system is expected to be beneficial to clinics
for purposes such as surgical planning.