VR in medicine: Virtual colonoscopy

Colon/rectal cancer is the second most common cause of death, yet among the most preventable when detected in its early stages. The traditional diagnostic procedures cause tremendous discomfort and are deeply invasive. The motivation for this work is firstly to develop an alternative technique to visualise the inner mucosal surface of the colonic wall. This technique will be based on three-dimensional (3D) visualisation and virtual reality to perform virtual endoscopy. However, there is a requirement of vast computational support. Therefore, secondly, this paper will discuss the possibilities adopting high performance computing and networking to support virtual reality medical applications.