The paper “Comparison of a Two-Handed Interface to a Wand Interface and a Mouse Interface for Fundamental 3D Tasks” has been accepted for publication at the IEEE 3DUI (3D User Interfaces) Conference on March 4-5. This paper describes a user study conducted at Wichita State University that found Digital ArtForms’ two-handed interface to be 4.5-4.7 times as fast as a mouse interface and 1.3-2.5 times as fast as a one-handed wand interface. We look forward to presenting and discussing the results at the conference.
Medgadget interviewed Paul Mlyniec and Arun Yoganandan of Digital ArtForms at the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) annual meeting. Read the article here.
Digital ArtForms returned to Los Gatos, California after a successful week in Chicago at the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) Annual Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Radiologists. Founded in 1915, the Radiological Society of North America is a professional membership society committed to excellence in patient care through education and research. This year's meeting consisted of over 50,000 attendees.
Digital ArtForms showed iMedic3D and a preliminary version of iMedicPACS to countless attendees. In addition to strong interest in Digital ArtForms products, numerous contacts were made that have the potential to lead to future collaborative efforts in radiology and surgical planning.
CHICAGO, Nov. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — RSNA ’11 — Digital ArtForms announces iMedic3D, the first in a new generation of imaging tools, as well as the addition of Dr Eliot Siegel and Dr David H Kim to its Advisory Board.
“iMedic3D brings immersive interaction to medical imaging. By replacing the 2D mouse with a pair of 3D mice, we empower radiologists and surgeons to better visualize and interact with their 3D datasets,” said Paul Mlyniec, President of Digital ArtForms.
“I’m proud to welcome Drs. Siegel and Kim to our Advisory Board. We are delighted that two such distinguished radiologists are so enthusiastic about iMedic3D, and we look forward to their considerable contributions to its development and acceptance. With their help, we believe we can change the face of Radiology. We are confident that the clinicians visiting with us at RSNA ’11 will agree,” said Mlyniec.
“The mouse and keyboard interface for imaging systems, including the PACS, has been essentially unchanged since the early 1990s,” said Dr Siegel. “… Digital ArtForms’ tracked interface … seems to be a truly innovative and an out of the box concept for interaction with complex CT and MRI datasets. It becomes intuitive after a few minutes of practice, and I believe that it has the potential to provide a more efficient and effective interface if workstation vendors can support its many degrees of freedom of motion.”
“The tracked interface is a paradigm shift in interpretation that makes sense,” said Dr. Kim. “It supports cross-sectional evaluation and extends naturally to manipulating volumetric data. In my opinion, this is clearly the future of radiology.”
Digital ArtForms has submitted five patents to the US Patent Office. The patents describe novel and efficient interaction techniques for visualizing and manipulating volumetric datasets. The Two-handed interface exposes a rich vein for innovation and these are the first of many patents that will serve applications in security, medicine, and other fields.
Dr. Jake Seagull presented the results of a study conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the paper presentation “Comparing Remote and In-Person Collaboration in Three Virtual Tasks Using a Two-handed Interface” at the 55th annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The research examined the utility of Digital ArtForms’ Two-Handed Interface (THI) in virtual avatar-to-avatar collaboration. Tasks consisted of 1) navigation through virtual environments, 2) acquisition of shared visual perspective, and 3) precision manipulation of virtual objects. All tasks were carried out by each participant in face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar mentoring conditions. The results showed that avatar-to-avatar collaboration was faster on all three tasks than face-to-face collaboration–using THI in a virtual telecollaboration setting was more effective than in-person collaboration.
The paper “iMedic: a Two-Handed Immersive Medical Environment for Distributed Interactive Consultation” has been published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics.
Paul Mlyniec, President of DigitalArtForms, gave a talk at the 18th Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Conference on Thursday in Newport Beach, California. He talked about the future of interactive imaging and showed several of the latest features of of iMedic: a Two-Handed Immersive Medical Environment for Distributed Interactive Consultation. Many of the features of iMedic evolved from graphics and virtual reality research conducted by Mr. Mlyniec in the 1990s at Silicon Graphics, Multi-Gen Paradigm, and Digital ArtForms. iMedic was developed with funding and oversight from the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC).
LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–With a continued focus of increasing 3D content in the education field while simultaneously raising the level of engagement, XPAND and Digital ArtForms are demonstrating the latest in 3D interaction and imaging at the BETT conference. As real-time 3D applications begin to steadily appear, the two companies will exhibit Two-Handed Interface (THI) technology with a game centered around mathematics, developed by JTM Concepts, Inc. In the game, users solve basic math problems, calculating answers and using the 3D THI system to manipulate the correct one into the appropriate 3D space.
The results are in from the Wichita State University Study funded by the US Army’s TATRC (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center). We intuitively knew that THI was more efficient than the mouse/keyboard and a typical one-handed wand interface, but until now we had no scientific evidence to support our belief. We were not surprised by the fact that THI was found to be superior to the mouse and wand for fundamental 3D tasks, but we were surprised by the extent of that efficiency gain–THI was found to be 4.5-4.7 times as fast as the mouse and 1.3-2.5 times as fast as the wand interface!
Also surprising was that there was no statistically significant differences in performance between stereoscopic and monoscopic displays. In the scientific method, not finding a result does not mean that no result exists (we suspect we would find a difference with more data). However, the large differences between interface type versus no measurable difference between display type implies that the type of interface is much more important than display type.
