Visualization of medical images over mobile wireless handheld devices

With the novel advances in wireless communication and personal mobile handheld devices, a newly emerging technology of medical visualization on mobile handheld is believed to provide advance service for physicians, especially in image-based diagnosis. In this paper, we have implemented a real time easy-to-use 3D volume visualization system on mobile handheld devices. The doctors could use their wireless handheld devices, such as Pocket PC or PDA, interactively access medical image at anytime and anywhere in the hospital building. System architecture, technical problems and solutions are discussed. Experimental results are clear enough to show this system to be practical for clinic diagnosis. The transmission rate for lossless compressed 256x256 24 bits color images could reach up to 5 frames per second under 802.11b WLAN standard. With progressive and lossy image compression, the frame rate can be further increased.

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