BrainWatch software for interactive exploration of brain scans in 3D virtual reality systems

The ability to view medical images as 3D objects, which can be explored interactively, has now become possible due to the advent of rapidly emerging virtual reality (VR) technologies. In the past, VR has been used as an educational tool for learning anatomy, a visualization tool for assisting surgery, and a therapeutic tool for rehabilitating patients with motor disorders. However, these older systems were either expensive to build or difficult to acquire and use. Exploiting the arrival of new consumer devices such as the Oculus Rift that are now affordable, we have developed a software application called BrainWatch for VR ready computers to enable 3D visualization and interactive exploration of DICOM data sets focusing on PET and MRI brain scans. BrainWatch software provides a unique set of 3 approaches for interacting with the virtual object which we have named the observatory scenario with an external camera, the planetarium scenario with an internal camera, and the voyager scenario with a mobile camera. A live interactive demo of BrainWatch VR with the Oculus Rift CV1 will be available for conference attendees to experience at EMBC 2017.