ARSlice: Head-Mounted Display Augmented with Dynamic Tracking and Projection

Computed tomography (CT) generates cross-sectional images of the body. Visualizing CT images has been a challenging problem. The emergence of the augmented and virtual reality technology has provided promising solutions. However, existing solutions suffer from tethered display or wireless transmission latency. In this paper, we present ARSlice, a proof-of-concept prototype that can visualize CT images in an untethered manner without wireless transmission latency. Our ARSlice prototype consists of two parts, the user end and the projector end. By employing dynamic tracking and projection, the projector end can track the user-end equipment and project CT images onto it in real time. The user-end equipment is responsible for displaying these CT images into the 3D space. Its main feature is that the user-end equipment is a pure optical device with light weight, low cost, and no energy consumption. Our experiments demonstrate that our ARSlice prototype provides part of six degrees of freedom for the user, and a high frame rate. By interactively visualizing CT images into the 3D space, our ARSlice prototype can help untrained users better understand that CT images are slices of a body.