Sketching and Annotating Vascular Structures to Support Medical Teaching, Treatment Planning and Patient Education

Abstract

In clinical practice, hand drawn sketches are employed to express concepts and are an efficient method for the discussion of complex issues. We present computer graphic methods to improve and support the creation and annotation of complex sketches, resulting in a more clear, expressive and understandable result. For this, we consider the medical areas of teaching, treatment planning and patient education. Our applications allow students, educators, physicians and patients to sketch and annotate vascular structures, their pathologies and treatment options as well as to simulate and illustrate blood flow. The used sketching approaches take advantage of semi-immersive environments as well as interactive whiteboards to enable the creation of vessels either in their spatially complex 3D representation or as a simplified 2D illustration. We evaluate our work in interviews with physicians and user studies to assess their usability and to reveal their benefits to support the respective medical domain.