A web-based multidisciplinary team meeting visualisation system

Abstract

Purpose Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTs) are the standard of care for safe, effective patient management in modern hospital-based clinical practice. Medical imaging data are often the central discussion points in many MDTs, and these data are typically visualised, by all participants, on a common large display. We propose a Web-based MDT visualisation system (WMDT-VS) to allow individual participants to view the data on their own personal computing devices with the potential to customise the imaging data, i.e. different view of the data to that of the common display, for their particular clinical perspective. Methods We developed the WMDT-VS by leveraging the state-of-the-art Web technologies to support four MDT visualisation features: (1) 2D and 3D visualisations for multiple imaging modality data; (2) a variety of personal computing devices, e.g. smartphone, tablets, laptops and PCs, to access and navigate medical images individually and share the visualisations; (3) customised participant visualisations; and (4) the addition of extra local image data for visualisation and discussion. Results We outlined these MDT visualisation features on two simulated MDT settings using different imaging data and usage scenarios. We measured compatibility and performances of various personal, consumer-level, computing devices. Conclusions Our WMDT-VS provides a more comprehensive visualisation experience for MDT participants.