A Projection-Based Augmented Reality System for Medical Applications

The aim of this paper was to present the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) system which uses a 2D video projector to project a 3D model of blood vessels, built by combining Computed Tomography (CT) slices of a human brain, onto a model of a human head. The difficulty in building this system is that the human head contains, not flat surfaces, but non-regular curved surfaces. Using a 2D projector to project a 3D model onto non-regular curved 3D surfaces would result in serious distortions of the projection if the image was not uncorrected first. This paper proposed a method of correcting the projection, not only based on the curvatures of the surfaces, but also on the viewing position of the observer. Experimental results of this system showed that an average positional deviation error of 2.065 mm could be achieved under various test conditions.