The Effect of Interactive Cues on the Perception of Angiographic Volumes in Virtual Reality

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we evaluate the effect of depth cues on the perception of three-dimensional cerebral angiographic data in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Specifically, a user study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of shading, pseudo-chromadepth and aerial perspective, both with and without a dynamic component, where the volume rendering parameters are modified based on the motion of the VR controllers. The results of the study showed that the type of cue that is used has little impact on decision time or relative depth perception, contrary to what has been previously observed in related works using 2D displays. However, shading resulted in better spatial understanding of local vascular structures. In terms of the effect of the dynamic cues, although they resulted in worse depth perception, they also resulted in less head movement which may provide a more ergonomic and intuitive solution for data exploration. This work is a first step towards gaining a better understanding of the interplay between interactive perceptual rendering and the impact is on spatial understanding of volume rendered medical data within VR contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual reality
• depth cues
• angiography
• volume rendering
• interaction techniques

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/XR.html.

2. www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/headset.

3. www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/base-stations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Discovery program, RGPIN-2020-05084.

Notes on contributors

Andrey Titov

Andrey Titov received his BCompSc and MCompSc degrees in computer science at Concordia University in 2018 and 2020. In 2021, he started working towards his Ph.D. degree in computer science at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS). He is a member of both the Multimedia Lab at ÉTS and the Applied Perception Lab at Concordia University. His research interests include medical visualization, human-computer interaction, volumetric rendering and virtual reality.

Marta Kersten-Oertel

Marta Kersten-Oertel received the BSc (Honours) degree in Computer Science and the BA degree in Art History from Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada) in 2002. In 2005, she completed her MSc in Computer Science at Queen’s University. After working as a research assistant at the GRaphisch-Interaktive Systeme at the University of Tübingen(Germany), in 2015 she received the PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). She is an Associate Professor in Computer Science and Software Engineering, PERFORM Centre researcher and Concordia University Research Chair in Applied Perception. Her research is focused on developing and evaluating new visualization techniques, and display and interaction methods specifically for health and clinical applications.

Simon Drouin

Simon Drouin is an associate professor in the department of Software and Information Technology Engineering at Ecole de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) in Montreal, Canada. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from École Polytechnique de Montréal before completing a Masters degree in Computer Science and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at McGill University. Before joining ETS, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His current research projects aim at combining principles of human visual perception, computer vision, human-computer interaction and computer graphics to facilitate the exploration of 3D medical images in virtual and augmented reality.