Many years ago, on November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays. The first X-ray image he took was of his wife Bertha's hand. The discovery of X-rays earned Röntgen the very first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Source

Many years ago, I broke a bone in my hand. 

Result: My hand needed surgery and a metal plate. You know how these things go; long waiting times in hospitals to get your scan taken, coming back later to see the results on the screen of the doctor prior to surgery. The doctor explains what needs to be done, what the risks are, whilst showing you the scans in black & white on a 2D computer screen. You are trying to decipher what they are seeing and whether you can actually see what they see. You probably google it yourself afterwards to properly understand. It is a fact that both patients and medical students alike struggle to understand complex 3D anatomical structures and spatial orientation such as e.g. the 27 bones in a hand, displayed in a 2D format.

Fast forwards 15 years later, there are much better ways to properly educate and inform patients so they better understand their issues.

Enter Holoxica’s Holoviewer, a 3D visualisation app. It allows full manipulation of 3D anatomy models, allows doctors to zoom in, do fly-throughs, and showcase the anatomy and/or surgical procedure either in 2D on a 2D screen, but much more efficiently in 3D, on a 3D display, without the need to wear glasses or headsets.

See below a 3D image of a hand model made with Holoxica’s Holoviewer app, shown on an 8K Looking Glass display.

Holoxica’s experimental Volumeviewer app converts DICOM data from MRIs, X-Rays & CT scans, ultrasounds into 3D holographic imagery, also viewable with the naked eye.  It’s not only surgeons and radiologists who need 3D representations instead of relying on 2D DICOM images, but 3D visualisations also help patients to understand, make informed decisions and even help to reduce their stress or anxieties.

Below is a video of a hand scan in 3D taken from x-rays made with Volumeviewer. It has been made with a portable scan by Adaptix, and is displayed in 3D on a Looking Glass display.

Can you imagine doing gentle physio exercises with hand tracking, trying to catch the balls on a 3D Looking Glass display?

And last but not least, with Holoxica’s Holo-Medicine suite, it is possible to see a coloured scan in 3D … remotely during a 3D video consultation with a patients’ doctor. No more need to travel to a hospital to see a scan in black & white in 2D or even doing your physio exercises remotely in 3D! You can give your doctor or physio a holographic high five!

I sure would have felt more at ease had I seen all this medical visualisation technology 15 years ago, but also wonder what Dr. Röntgen’s wife would have made of it all.