Virtual colonoscopy (VC) is rapidly gaining popularity and is poised to become the procedure of choice in lieu of the conventional optical colonoscopy (OC) for mass screening for colon polyps – the precursor of colorectal cancer. VC combines computed tomography (CT) scanning and volume visualization technology. The patient abdomen is imaged in a few seconds by a CT scanner. A 3D model of the colon is then reconstructed from the CT scan by automatically segmenting the colon and employing "electronic cleansing" for computer-based removal of the residual material. The physician interactively navigates through the virtual colon using volume rendering, and employs customized tools for 3D measurements, "virtual biopsy" to interrogate suspicious regions, and "painting" to support 100% inspection of the colon surface. Unlike OC, VC is patient friendly, fast, non-invasive, more accurate, and cost-effective procedure for mass screening for colorectal cancer.  Our VC further incorporates a novel pipeline for computer-aided detection (CAD) of polyps. It automatically detects polyps by integrating volume rendering, conformal colon flattening, clustering, and “virtual biopsy” analysis. Along with the reviewing physician, CAD provides a second pair of “eyes” for locating polyps. We also explore immersive VC in a virtual reality environmen.

Ariel Kaufman is the Chair of the Computer Science Department, Director of the Center of Visual Computing (CVC), Chief Scientist of the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT), and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Radiology at Stony Brook University. He has conducted research for over 35 years in visualization, graphics, user interfaces and VR and their applications, primarily in biomedicine. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Fellow, and recipient of IEEE Visualization Career Award (‘05). He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics (TVCG), 1995-98. He has been co-founder, papers/ program co-chair, and steering committee member of IEEE Visualization Conferences and chair and director of IEEE CS Technical Committee on Visualization & Graphics (VGTC). He received BS (‘69) in Math/Physics from Hebrew University, MS (‘73) in Computer Science from Weizmann Institute, and PhD (‘77) in Computer Science from Ben-Gurion University, Israel.