CAVE-technology for visualizing medical imagery

As medical data acquisition has become digital and tomographical scanners allow threedimensional reconstruction in ease, it is still standard to analyze the data plane by plane or in a multiplanar view. Both are limited to two-dimensional environments and cause difficulties in analyzing complex anatomical and pathological structures. Decreasing hardware prices and PCclusters, which can compare with more expensive super-computers, will help implementing virtual environments in medicine for teaching, simulation and interacting with medical image data. Using free open source software, such as 3D-Slicer, for segmentation and preparing the data for the CAVE is quick and suitable for clinical use as well as for education. For educational purposes, the use of very high-resolution data sets will be ideal and could be made available for everyone, based on the open source philosophy. D 2004 CARS and Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.