Immersive analytics for medicine: Hybrid 2D/3D sketch-based interfaces for annotating medical data and designing medical devices

We explore the role that immersive technologies, specifically virtual reality (VR) and hybrid 2D/3D sketch-based interfaces and visualizations, can play in analytical reasoning for medicine. Two case studies are described: (1) immersive explanations of medical procedures, and (2) immersive design of medical devices. Both tightly integrate 2D imagery and data with 3D interfaces, models, and visualizations. This is an approach we argue is likely to be particularly useful in medicine, where analytical tasks often involve relating 2D data (e.g., medical imaging) to 3D contexts (e.g., a patient's body). User feedback and observations from our interdisciplinary team indicate the utility of the approach for the current case studies as well as some shortcomings and areas for future research. This work contributes to a broader discussion of how hybrid 2D/3D interfaces may form an essential ingredient of future immersive analytics systems across a variety of domains.