TeleInViVo: Towards collaborative volume visualization environments

Converging technologies in the areas of telecommunications, volume visualization, and computer hardware and peripherals have made possible in recent years the development of new tools for collaboration that extend the reach of health care professionals and other consumers of volumetric data around the world. We describe a recent development at the Center for Research in Computer Graphics in Providence, RI, that makes a significant contribution to this area. TeleInViVo TM is an application that supports collaborative volumetric data visualization and exploration. It is an extension and partial reworking of InViVo TM, a volume visualization application developed at the Fraunhofer IGD, in Darmstadt, Germany. InViVo, which is largely focused around the medical community and with an emphasis on diagnostic ultrasound, has been augmented with new modes of interaction, an intuitive collaboration mechanism, and an architectural modification to support future developments in this area