Challenges of volume visualization in medicine

Technological development has in the recent decades brought in several new imaging modalities which have significantly influenced medical diagnostics. A doctor has gained a possibility to peek inside the human body without the necessity of surgical intervention. The early variants of these techniques took advantage of classical approaches, residing in printing pictures on film transparencies. However, soon after their introduction computers started to gradually penetrate the area, with unprecedented diagnostic possibilities, but also with new challenges. A new participant entered the area - a computer scientist. Which was his/her role? Did he/she simplify the doctors life? We will present the problem from the point of view of a computer scientist, whose task is, among others, to transform the 'high level' demands of a doctor - usually a radiologist - to a 'low level' sequence of operations for data processing and visualization. We will report on the experience gained within the framework of two projects aimed at the development of clinical applications for diagnostics of vessel pathologies of lower extremities. In the talk we will present, on the one hand, the techniques and their details and, on the other hand, we will report also on the knowledge gained in challenging collaboration within a radiological department of a hospital.