IIIT-D student develops app for 3D viewing of MRI scans

NEW DELHI: In a first, an Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology student has made it possible to view CT and MRI images in a virtual reality environment through a software application.

The new application, developed by IIIT-D final year B.tech student Palash Bansal would greatly facilitate the works of medical community, which has been constrained till date to view these images only in two dimensions on computer screens.

Started as a research project, the new software application has now been packaged by Bansal as a business model.

Explaining the outcome of his project, Bansal said, “We have been able to take highquality photos of the human body through MRI and CT scans for decades. These images enabled doctors to perform less invasive diagnostics on patients in less amount of time.”

“With development of computer science and technology, we are now able to even reconstruct three-dimensional models of the scans through complex algorithms and colour them. But, these systems have many limitations now,” he said.

“They can only work in labs and the scans can only be visualized on a computer screen that is 2D in nature, thereby depriving us of using both our eyes to perceive the depth,” Bansal said.

Bansal said his application Realvol, which would soon be incorporated, has taken this technology several steps ahead, enabling a person to see the same CT/MRI images in a Virtual Reality environment with complete 3D perception.agencies