Parallel session on Tools for processing and exchanging 3D medical image big data: BodyPass (BodyPass project sponsored session)

Currently hospitals store and grow massive collections of 3D data that are not accessible by researchers, professionals and companies. About 2.7 petabytes a year are stored in the EU26. In parallel to the advances made in the health sector, new 3D body-surface scanning low cost technology has been developed for the goods consumer sector, namely apparel, animation and art. It is estimated that currently one person is scanned every 15 minutes in the US and Europe. And increasing.

The 3D data of the health sector can be used by designers and manufacturers of the consumer goods sector. At the same time, although 3D body-surface scanners have been developed primarily for the garment industry, 3D scanners’ low cost, non-invasive character, and ease of use make them appealing for widespread clinical applications and large-scale epidemiological surveys. However, companies and professionals of the consumer goods sector cannot access the 3D data of the health sector. And vice versa. Even exchanging information between data owners in the same sector is a big problem today. It is necessary to overcome problems related with data privacy and the processing of huge 3D datasets. To break these silos and foster the exchange of 3D data we need tools to process and exchange data in a secure way.

The objective of the session is to discuss about the different tools to: process and harmonize 3D databases, aggregate 3D data from different huge datasets, and exchange 3D data and assure anonymization and data protection (based on blockchain technology and distributed query engines). Services and visualization tools adapted to the necessities of the healthcare sector will be also tackled.

We will explain the tools developed in the BodyPass project and how they are applied in the ongoing pilot in two hospitals in Spain and Italy.