We present a software package which uniquely integrates several facets of image-guided medicine into a single portable, extendable environment. It provides capabilities for automatic registration, semiautomatic segmentation, 3D surface model generation, 3D visualization, and quantitative analysis

This paper presents the principle of multimodal and multi-informational neuronavigation as well as the data fusion environment we have developed for these techniques. Our fusion environment supports the planning step and includes registration, segmentation, 3D visualisation as well as data browsing

Testicular tumours are an important group of tumours because the majority are curable. Imaging with computed tomography is pivotal to patient management but other techniques including magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound and plain films are also useful for staging and follow-up. Positron emission

Abstract. Image-guided neurosurgical interventional procedures utilize medical imaging techniques to identify the most appropriate path for accessing a targeted structure. Often, preoperative planning entails the use of multi-contrast or multi-modal imaging for assessing different aspects

Software visualization is nifty stuff; but is it the powerful cognitive tool it is often assumed to be? This chapter attempts to moderate the understandable enthusiasm for software visualization and to raise some of the questions for which the discipline doesn't yet have answers. The chapter is structured as a list of questions with discussion. The questions are not a comprehensive analysis of cognitive challenges in software visualization. Rather, the chapter attempts to provide a list sufficiently provocative to give designers pause, in order: (a) to establish that good software visualization isn't simply a matter of mimicking paper-based tasks or doing what is technically easy---and certainly isn't `solved' yet; but also (b) even simple tools can improve software comprehension, if they're the right ones.

Intelligent multimodal interfaces can facilitate scientists in utilising available information resources. Combining scientific visualisations with interactive and intelligent tools can help create a “habitable ” information space. Development of such tools remains largely iterative. We discuss

Virtual reality is an effective way (in many situations) for creating 3D visualisations, although the visualisations need to be designed with both 3D and virtual reality in mind to be most useful. Many issues are related to virtual realities, although these are often overlooked by users due

Abstract. The concept of multi-modal data fusion generally involves some facet of registration. However to truly distinguish the notion of “fusion ” from conventional “registration ” an understanding of representation and visualisation must be incorporated into the solution. This is a particularly

EMBASSI – its name targeting dedicatedly at electronic assistance for the operation of multimedia systems – has been focused on the interaction between private, technically unskilled people and their increasingly technical environment. From the very beginning EMBASSI has not restricted itself to the layer of interaction technologies but has widened the coverage towards all elements of software communication necessary to design a system able to offer different types and levels of electronic assistance while accepting the entire range of user inputs and producing a great variety of output modalities adapted to the environment on the one and the user profile on the other hand. During the project’s life cycle EMBASSI has been able to profit from the interdisciplinary cooperation of engineers, information technologists, usability engineers and psychologists. Outstanding results of the project are distributed over the disciplines: An integrated software environment that includes a rule-based tool for developing assistance and that guides the industrial process of Usability Engineering has been produced based on the psychological analysis and user trials. Innovative Man-Machine-Interaction technologies like aids-free speech input with adaptive, language-tagged vocabulary, biometric sensing of faces and viewing directions, video based gesture detection, tactile displays and many more have been developed and demonstrated. All these modules are teamed by an amodal, generic discourse management and mode fusion and dispersion respectively. The semantic protocol, an ontology-based agent communication protocol combined with a strict layering of the system architecture has become the fundament of the partner’s work and has enabled the project to – in addition to software frameworks showing the feasability of the various approaches – provide demonstrators incorporating “real systems”. For the scientific community EMBASSI has produced an Open Source platform and approximately 200 scientific papers and conference talks. 1. Motivation

Abstract—Advances in computational methods and hardware platforms provide efficient processing of medical imaging data sets for surgical planning. In the case of neurosurgical interventions that are performed via a straight access path, planning entails selecting a pathway, from the scalp surface