Medical scanners, such as CT- and MR- scanners, produce a stack of 2D scans, each displaying a slice through the patient. Doctors inspect these scans separately or side by side when diagnosing the patient or planning the surgical procedure. We propose a system that combines the stack of 2D medical scans and uses volume visualization to render a 3D reconstruction of the scanned area of the patient in virtual reality.

Alongside the volume visualization, we propose several tools that the doctors can use to explore the data. First is a menu from which the user can select preset transfer functions. Transfer functions are used to map the volume data to alpha and color values. Second is a clipping plane that assigns different transfer functions to the part of the volume above the plane, e.g., rendering skin below and the skeleton above, or rendering everything above fully transparent to give a clear view of the slice. The user can freely position and orientate the clipping plane

An evaluation with medical personnel showed that the participants were able to diagnose a patient purely based on the proposed system.