Ultrasound that works like 3-D movies.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Parents-to-be soon might don special glasses in the ultrasound lab to see their developing fetuses in the womb "in living 3-D, just like at the IMAX movies," maintain researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, Durham, N.C. The same team that developed real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound imaging says it now has modified the commercial version of the scanner to produce an even more realistic perception of depth. Paired images seem to pop out of the screen when viewed with the 3-D glasses.

The researchers created an updated version of the image-viewing software found on clinical ultrasound scanners, making it possible to achieve a stereo display with no additional hardware. "To our knowledge, this is the first time it's been made possible to display real-time stereo image pairs on a clinical scanner," indicates Stephen Smith, professor of biomedical engineering. "We believe all 3-D scanners could be modified in this way with only minor software changes."

The new imaging capacity can improve the early diagnosis of certain types of birth defects of the face and skull and improve surgeons' depth perception during ultrasound-guided medical procedures, including tumor biopsies and robot assisted surgeries done through tiny "keyhole" incisions.

Human depth perception largely is the result of stereo vision--the slightly...