Augmented Reality Rendering of Computed Tomography 3-D Density Data
Overall Objectives: Purchase equipment and Software required to develop the technology; Import CT Data for viewing on an AR device; Develop the tools necessary to manipulate the data in AR. With Augmented and Virtual Reality technology becoming more common and affordable everyday, new visualization techniques need to be developed that can leverage this technology to visualize data in new and useful ways. Computed Tomography (CT) scans, are the result of a powerful X-ray machine taking multiple images of the same object. These images represent slices of the original object and have extremely high resolution. Because of the high resolution, CT scanning is often used in the medical field but is becoming increasingly predominate in diverse industrial fields as well. This is an example of a CT scan that shows an object with multiple items inside. These items are represented by different colors in gray scale to indicate different densities. This is also from the data set used for the duration of the project. The data sets usually contain hundreds of slides that looks like just like this. Visualizing these large data sets can be difficult. The general approach for this seedling was to identify the devices and software that are currently in use for data visualization and evaluate them for use in the project. After that a plan was made to convert the data into a format viewable in AR. Tools were then developed to manipulate that data. The project was a success, but there is plenty of room to advance the technology and create better visualizations.