Realtime three-dimensional remote medical skills acquisition

Three-dimensional techniques are gaining widespread use in a number of disciplines, including medicine, where the visualization of depth information is not only useful but important. Both computer-generated 3-D imaging and 3-D video are set to become increasingly important tools for both diagnosis and teaching. In this paper we will present some of the work that we are currently undertaking using 3-D techniques for remote surgical skills acquisition. This work is based on the use of a small headset with twin miniature video cameras, video codecs, two different 3-D visualization systems and BT's ISDN telecommunications network.