Medical animations

Animations employ the human abilities to perceive and understand motions. Animations enables seamless transitions between different states, e.g., emphasizing different anatomical structures. Animation design is conceptually based on principles developed in the film industry and based on learning theories. Animation design involves the selection of appropriate viewpoints, the computation of camera paths that connect them. Moreover, material properties, such as color and transparency, are changed over time, e.g., to make structures visible and highlight them. The computation of fly-throughs through the colon or the bronchial tree are examples with a high relevance in clinical practice. Processes in the human body, such as digestion, breathing, pulsatile blood flow, may be captured with dynamic medical image data, e.g., perfusion data and blood flow measurements. In these settings, animations enable to directly observe changes in these dynamic data. Care has to be taken to avoid too complex animations that lead to cognitive overload.