VasNetMR: Interactive Exploration of Vascular Network Blood Flow Distribution with Mixed Reality

Vascular system is a complex network inside the human body and local vascular disease may affect other parts of the body with the circulation. As the three-dimensional structure of the vascular network is complex, it is challenging to intuitively visualize the entire system. Furthermore, it is not efficient to convey the function of the vascular network by solely showing the geometry of the vessels. We propose a mixed reality system “VasNetMR" showing the arterial network for the purpose of education. Users are enabled to interactively explore the geometry as well as the blood flow distribution of the vessel network. The key challenging problem is to update the flow rate and blood pressure throughout the whole body in a fast and correct way. We adapt a one-dimensional model to the network with proper boundary conditions and study how the simplified model works for a large arterial network. Finally, we develop VasNetMR based on this computational tool and conduct experiments and user studies. We compare the results from the interactive simulation with those from expensive simulations. At the sample locations, the average errors of the blood pressure and flow rate are less than 5.7mmHg and 1.9cm3/s. The computational time is less than 3 seconds. With a fast simulation model and a mixed reality interface, we enable interactive presentation of blood flow distribution in a whole-body vascular network. The features of our system may benefit applications in medical education or communication.