Feasibility study - The coloured brain: a photorealistic virtual model of living brain tissue

虽然身体解剖被广泛认为是解剖学教育的“黄金标准”，但由于经济和道德压力，它的可用性和使用率正在下降。即使对于那些可以接受身体培训的人来说，他们也发现，在手术室中观察到的活组织的颜色和外观之间的差异，与他们第一次观察身体组织时的情况有很大不同。因此，他们的解剖学知识必须适应他们工作环境的现实。数字化解剖学工具可以提供部分替代身体解剖训练的方法。然而，这里的限制之一是，当将解剖结构渲染为3D模型时，通常使用灰度或伪彩色。虽然我们可以尝试使用与真实组织更接近的颜色，或者可能是纹理贴图，但很难再现与活组织的颜色和阴影完全匹配的颜色。在计算机图形学中，一种可用于照片级真实感绘制的技术是应用双向反射比分布函数(BRDF)，该函数是定义光如何在不透明表面反射的4维函数。BDRF还没有被广泛应用于数字解剖模型。这项可行性研究的目的是开发和试验技术，使我们能够通过结合活组织的外观来显著提高虚拟解剖学教学工具的质量。它将汇集计算机建模和材料获取方面的研究专门知识，以及进入手术室和教学论坛的机会。我们计划结合两个实验室的知识和技术成就来实现这一不同寻常的合作：Marina Bloj是一名具有物理学背景的颜色科学家；Nigel John是一名知名专家，在医疗虚拟环境和数据可视化方面拥有超过15年的经验。这个协作项目将使我们能够首次整合这两个小组的技术，并为未来扩展的协作项目建立平台。

Although cadaver dissection is widely accepted as being the 'gold standard' for anatomy education, its availability and usage is decreasing due to financial and ethical pressures. Even for those with access to cadaveric-based training, they find that the differences between the colour and appearance of living tissues that may be observed in the operating theatre are vastly different from what they first observed with the dead tissues of a cadaver. Their anatomy knowledge must therefore adapt to the reality of their working environment. Digital anatomy tools can provide a partial alternative to cadavaric-based training. One of the limitations here, however, is that grey scale or pseudo colour are typically used when rendering the anatomy as 3D models. Although we can attempt to use colours that more closely match that of real tissues, or maybe a texture map, it is difficult to reproduce an exact match of the colours and shading of living tissues. In computer graphics a technique that can be used for photorealistic rendering is to apply a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF), which is a 4-dimensional function that defines how light is reflected at an opaque surface. BDRFs have not yet been extensively applied to digital anatomy models.The aim of this feasibility study is to develop and pilot techniques that will allow us to significantly improve the quality of virtual anatomy teaching tools by incorporating the appearance of live tissues. It will bring together the research expertise in computer modelling and material capture as well as access to operating theatre and teaching forum. We propose to combine the knowledge and technological achievements of two labs to realise this unusual collaboration: Marina Bloj is a colour scientist with a background in physics; Nigel John is an established expert with over 15 years experience in medical virtual environments and data visualisation. This collaborative project will allow us to integrate techniques from these two groups for the first time and establish the platform for future extended collaborative projects.