The objective of the "Virtual Echocardiography Project" is the research and development of innovative techniques and solutions for the achievement of a virtual examination environment for educational purpose in echocardiography.
The visualisation of a beating human heart requires initially the elaboration of an ontological framework for detailed heart-beat descriptions at the medical and at the geometrical level. This ontological framework is important for future virtual tutoring work and also, more generally, for connecting visualisation technology with core Artificial Intelligence technologies at DFKI. In addition to the geometrical heart-beat model it will be of further interest to develop a detailed model based on physiological mechanisms underlying the heart-beat, both for the healthy and the diseased heart. In combination with artifical ultrasound image generation a virtual examination environment will be established.
