Medical Digital Twin
InfraVis User
Gunnar Cedersund
InfraVis Application Expert
Gustav Eriksson, Ludvig Mangs
InfraVis Node Coordinator
Lonni Besançon
Tools & Skills
Unreal Engine
Keywords
Motion Capture, Medical Data Visualisation
About
In the future, a digital copy of your own body – a digital twin – may be used to help you understand how to live a healthy life. At Linköping University (LiU), mathematical models are being developed as tools for better health communication. This is the result of collaboration between engineering biologists, psychologists, software developers, behavioral scientists and doctors.
Mathematical models and the graphs that they produce can teach you much about your body, but often it is too abstract and not impactful enough to drive change in the patient. Even if the data is personal and can make predictions about your future health, it can quickly become intangible for the patient, and sometimes even for the medical professionals.
This is where InfraVis comes in. The goal of the project was to create an interface for the patient to interact with and understand their data in a more personal way. By creating a personal 3D avatar, the patient gets a visual reference to go with their medical data, where they can see the potential impact of their behavior, treatment, or rehabilitation on their own body over time.
Challenges & Opportunities
The biggest challenge of the project was finding a way to make the 3D visualization accessible through browsers and mobile applications. Since the patient should not need access to a powerful computer for rendering the 3D visualization, another route had to be found. By using a technique called Pixel Streaming the interactive 3D environment was made accessible to anyone through a browser or application as long as the user has a stable internet connection. The system streams video to the user, and the user can interact with the environment directly from their interface.