Before

Questions and ideas

• Can you see what you need to see? What's missing? What's in the way? Should we change the density of tubes? Are the surfaces useful? Are slicing planes important?(dhl)
• Are the interaction methods appropriate? We should spend some time showing other applications to give other ideas for interaction techniques.
• I'd like to have them spend some time to try to "plan" a surgical procedure. We should be taking notes during this to make sure that we can build on what they say.
• One thought I had while reading it was that a users could switch between 3D and 2D while in the cave - perhaps by taking their glasses off? Also, another way to "take away" the experience might be to have an immersive display (regular computer monitor size) at their own location - along the lines of the displays we're going to put at Caltech, CMU, and Edinburgh. One up at MGH might help. We should ask what the docs think today.
• Take home issues. What do you want to take away from the cave? Intellectually speaking, we hope they can take away a better understanding of this brain they are going to operate on, and in this context, this question just gets back to what dhl already said below (are we showing the right things etc..) But, it seems a shame that when you leave the cave, you really leave the cave. I mean it's really a one time experience. Maybe a hi-res printout of some area they find while exploring in the cave would be useful to bring back. Maybe a model with some key annotations or reference frames marked out. I don't know. I'm just wondering what we can do to increase link these surgeons have between the experience they get in the cave and what they do everyday when they don't have access to a cave. What can we do to keep them thinking about what they did while they were here after they leave, so it's really useful to them and so that they want to come back. I would think that if they have something they can hold and refer to it would really help.(dfk)
• Resolution. Chris Johnson was so concerned with resolution in his medical vis applications. There is sort of a fundamental technology limitation in the cave as far as resolution goes, but I think it might actually be an interesting problem to address through interaction. When you visit the cave, why are we always confined to the cave disply? Maybe there is something we can gain by linking your VR experience with some more traditional work experiences. For example, working with both the cave 3D display, and a hi-res 2D display right outside the cave.
• One thing I've been thinking about in terms of interaction is having a surgeon or archeologist's time in the cave involve working both in the cave and outside of it. there are at least a few reasons why i think you might want to do this... 1. you can't stay in there for too long. hurts the eyes, get dizzy, etc.. 2. you can't use normal things that you might bring from your office like a chart of regions in the brain, map of petra, book, pencil... 3. if you could use these things, or maybe just even a regular computer or hi-res touch screen, you start to create a link between your VR experience and your life outside the cave. So, going to the cave actually helps you make a change on your petra map, or gives you a steamtube printout where you circle something that interests you while you're at the cave. Whether this is really a better way to work in the cave, remains to be seen, but I think it at least starts to foster this attitude, that you can really learn something real and take something away from the cave. I don't think the cave should be a one time experience. It seems that the more links we can provide between what you do in VR and what you do outside of VR the better.
• I'm thinking of something where you would spend 15 min in the cave, then step out through a curtin to a little room where you have a touch screen, printer, your brain book, (whatever else these people use). When you step out, the room lights go up, and the display automatically changes to mono and is sort of like a giant monitor. Maybe like the big monitor that Eileen was wishing she had in the sci-viz mtg the other day. The cave can be a really nice mono display simply because there is so much display surface area. So, you take your glasses off, maybe get a hi-res shot of what you were looking at on the touch screen or through the printer. Look at your books, talk to your collegues, point back into the cave, which now shows probably more chart-like data in mono. Then you go back in for another 15 min, now that you have an idea about other things you want to look at in more detail. And, the process continues...
• I think the most interesting parts are linking your 3D task with a 2D task performed outside the cave, using activities outside the cave to drive the cave display in a mono mode, transitioning between viewing in stereo and mono on the same surface (gets back to walls ideas), in general transitioning between VR and the real world and making these 2 work in harmony. This way of working could really be a justification for a 4 or 5 wall cave as opposed to one that is completely closed in.
• How do we get VR to people who can use it? They can't spend everyday at the cave, so how can we expect what they do at the cave to affect the things that they really do every day? I think this could really be helpful for people. The question is, what do archeologists or neurosurgeons need to bring (patient records, other data, etc..) to the cave when they are really looking at a real patient and planning an operation? What do they want to do with this stuff while they are using the cave (notes, circle things, or are they so used to doing things in their head, that the answer is nothing!) And, what do they want to take back with them as a record of their experience? Can we provide something that makes your visit to the cave useful even on the days you can't be there?