EuroVis short paper ‘VarVis: Visualizing Anatomical Variation in Branching Structures’ accepted!

The thrice rejected, thrice cursed work on visualizing anatomical variations in branching structures has been accepted as a short paper at EuroVis 2016! This means I can finally show you a video of the work without jeopardizing the double-blind review process:

Abstract: Anatomical variations are naturally-occurring deviations from typical human anatomy. While these variations are considered normal and non-pathological, they are still of interest in clinical practice for medical specialists such as radiologists and transplantation surgeons. The complex variations in branching structures, for instance in arteries or nerves, are currently visualized side-by-side in illustrations or expressed using plain text in medical publications.
In this work, we present a novel way of visualizing anatomical variations in complex branching structures for educational purposes: VarVis. VarVis consists of several linked views that reveal global and local similarities and differences in the variations. We propose a novel graph representation to provide an overview of the topological changes. Our solution involves a topological similarity measure, which allows the user to select variations at a global level based on their degree of similarity. After a selection is made, local topological differences can be interactively explored using illustrations and topology graphs. We also incorporate additional information regarding the probability of the various cases. Our solution has several advantages over traditional approaches, which we demonstrate in an evaluation.

The other short paper that was accepted is now on the EuroGraphics 2016 conference program, so I guess it is all official now. With all these short papers going around, I somehow keep getting reminded of the Simpsons and a certain phrase more specifically:

We should to get the STAR notification tomorrow, so hope to come back with more good news 🙂

New publication: Lymphatic drainage pathways from the cervix uteri

In a previous post, I mentioned I made a 3D interactive pdf for a medical publication. This paper was recently accepted at the Gynecologic Oncology journal and it is now available online: Lymphatic drainage pathways from the cervix uteri; implications for radical hysterectomy? I’ll try and do a little ‘Science in plain English’, for those interested but not all that familiar with the medical jargon.

A hysterectomy is a surgical treatment for early-stage cervical cancer where the womb is taken out. Typically also part of the lymphatic system in the region is removed to prevent the cancer from spreading. There are different types of hysterectomies that vary by how much tissue is taken out:

New Publication: ”Toward a highly-detailed 3D pelvic model” and Google Scholar Citations

I love the smell of new publications in the morning! This particular morning I woke up to a nice little e-mail from Google Scholar entitled ‘Review updates to your Google Scholar profile’. It featured a brand new publication for me to approve and to add to my Google Scholar profile:

  • Toward a highly-detailed 3D pelvic model: Approaching an ultra-specific level for surgical simulation and anatomical education. A.C. Kraima, N.N. Smit, D. Jansma, C. Wallner, R.L.A.W. Bleys, C.J.H. v.d. Velde, C.P. Botha, M.C. Deruiter, Clinical Anatomy, December 2012