Overview [draft]

The Medical Working Group for X3D develops and demonstrates open interoperable standards for the representation of human anatomy based on a wide variety of imaging modalities.

Application Areas:

• Medical Modeling

• Surgical training

• Patient education

Technical Focus:

• Representation of human anatomy in X3D

• Association of 2D images (from multiple modalities) with 3D skeletal structure with registration

• Extension of X3D to accommodate image textures in context of 3D anatomy model

The Medical Working Group is developing an open interoperable standard for the representation of human anatomy based on input from a wide variety of imaging modalities. This will allow manufacturers of imaging equipment to export an interoperable file format that can be used both by physicians and students on their desktop computers. Radiologists and physicians can give the patient CD-ROMS of their scans which they can view in the privacy of their homes. If a patient has undergone multiple types of scans (CAT, MRI, PET) these may all be viewed and registered giving the physician and patient a clearer view of the underlying issues. Researchers can take the exported data from many different types of equipment and fuse them into a coherent 3D data set that can be used both for patient education, diagnostics and surgical training.

The X3D Volume Component and Medical Profle is tightly focused on medical applications that can benefit from real time 3D visualization. These types of applications include medical modeling and simulation for research and education; 3D image rendering for planning and guiding surgical and nuclear medicine procedures; image fusion-the association of specific 2D images from multimodal (PET, CAT, MRI, Ultrasound) scans with one another or with existing 3D images of a given patient.

Goals

The Medical WG seeks to identify portions (subsets) of X3D that can be applied to electronic health records. The group will identify gaps in X3D that may be appropriate to fill with new specifications, and will develop best practices and techniques for the application of X3D to these domains. In addition the group will identify specific areas of work in which group participants will contribute. When appropriate the group will specify changes and/or additions to X3D and assist the X3D WG to move those changes through the ISO process.

Tasks

Specific tasks are determined by the working group as needed to meet the goals listed above. These may vary considerably over time. A listing of current tasks, including deliverables and timescales, will be maintained on the community wiki web page and/or the Medical WG web page. Communication will occur via the Medical working group email list which will be: Med@web3d.org

Practices

The Medical WG will normally follow the Board of Directors approved Web3D Consortium Working Group practices defined on the Working Group Practices web page.

Meetings

Meetings are held at as determined by members of the Medical WG and at their discretion. The date, time, and duration of the meetings are determined by the membership of the WG to not conflict with other Consortium activities.

Offices

The working group normally appoints two officers or more, name co-chairs. They are responsible for raising meeting agendas, chairing the meetings and taking and issuing the minutes of the meeting. Additional offices, on either a temporary or a permanent basis, may be created as required.

Participants

The Medical WG is an open group, so that broad community engagement is possible. All participants (member or not), must sign the Web3D IPR policy. The consortium has a “Community” member status, which are for non-paying members. We suggest using this mechanism for participation for non-members. Any member of the Consortium may attend any Medical WG meeting. Any member of the Consortium may join the Medical WG by becoming a member of the Medical WG Mailing list (reference member-only WG page) and regularly attending the WG meetings. Any member of the WG may, at their own discretion stop being a member of the WG. Regular participants are listed in the minutes of the meeting.
[http://www.web3d.org/about/documents]

Dependencies and Liaisons

• The Medical WG provides official liaison representation to DICOM

• The Medical WG will not enter into external dependencies that are not previously approved by the Web3D Consortium.

Confidentiality

Agenda and minutes are available to WG members, and are published in the Medical WG members mailing list. At the discretion of the WG, selected portions of the minutes of the meetings may be published in a public area (web site, public mailing list, etc.) The chair(s) of the Medical WG will be responsible for publication of the minutes.

Communication

Medical WG Members-only mailing list – Med@web3d.org
Public Working Group pages - http://www.web3d.org/working-groups/medical http://www.web3d.org/wiki/index.php/X3D_Medical

Decision Policy

This will follow section general practice of the consensus and voting policy declared in the Working Group Practices document. Consensus will be the primary principle applied.

Intellectual Property Considerations

All working group members agree to follow the Web3D Consortium Intellectual Property Rights policy.

• All patent encumbrances must be pre declared prior to working group scrutiny.

• Encumbered technologies require Board of Directors approval before being included in documentation for submission to ISO or release to the public.

• There is a strong preference for only including royalty Free (RF) technology.

• Patented submissions used in a final specification typically fall under a reciprocal license.

Creation, and Approval Dates

This charter was created on XXXXX and approved by the Web3D Consortium Board of Directors on  XXXXXX.

This charter, under the participants section, suggests "community membership" as a way to participate in the working group. I note that this is contrary to the listing of Membership Levels, Dues and Benefits decribed at http://www.web3d.org/join​.

As far as I'm concerned there are no major modifications needed.

Maybe I'd just consider writing email addresses in all lowercase characters: med@web3d.org

Also there seems to be an extra ] in the link at the end of the Participants section in Nicholas's comment, make sure it has been removed properly in final version.

Regarding working group participation, I can't really say whether it should be open or not to "community members" but from my 'little' experience it is beneficial to have some external participation from time to time.

HI

OK this is close

 and we will finalize by Friday...

 One suggestion is to include a GOAL

 to track and collaborate with the H-ANIM Working Group

Suggested shared goal:

• Cooperate and collaborate with H-Anim Working Group on common models for medical use

Again suggest rename of mailing list for memorability: "medical@web3D.org"

This is not the correct technology platform for collaborative editing of a document.  Everybody else in the world uses Microsoft Word with Track Changes enabled or Google Docs.  Since Google Docs is free, I will cut and paste Nick's comment above (frankly I don't even know what he changed exactly from the original) and share it with everyone: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z-LZRhmM7ndH3Kx5zzbGQcfVfRNeM_5na8GF...

BTW, if this doesn't follow the standard template for Charters (and I feel that there should be a standard template that every WG must use) then it needs to be changed to fit that template.

Thanks,

Mike