From raw data to WWW compatible visualization and manipulation: Imaging human electric potentials

This paper describes a pilot system that acquires images of the electric potentials within the human body and stores the results in a format accessible and visualizable through the WWW. The proposed system uses a system of external electrodes to acquire measurements of electric potentials at the level of the skin, followed by an algorithm that reconstructs the value of the electric potential in the interior of the human body, thus producing a three-dimensional (3D) image. The main aspects of the reported work is the visualization of the results in such a way that the acquired information can be imaged through the WWW so that the diagnostically useful information can be maximized. For this reason, the voxels of the acquired electric image are labeled using a conventional CT image from the same patient whereas a triangulation algorithm (marching cubes — MC) is used to create the VRML output for information visualization.