Development of Anaglyph 3D Functionality for Cost-Effective Virtual Reality Anatomical Education

Virtual reality (VR) is rapidly becoming more widely available and accessible as a technology due to the affordability of cheap computing power. This has made it possible for virtual reality systems to capture audiences in industry and education, as well as for personal use. Currently, a major limitation of VR headsets is that the user’s vision is completely occluded, making it difficult for them to interact with others. While this can be solved by having a VR headset and VR capable computer for each user, this becomes much more expensive and, often, an unrealistic solution. This becomes even more problematic in an educational setting since it is difficult for the given instructor and large groups of students to have a shared learning experience. Here, we have developed anaglyph 3D functionalities into our Visible Heart® Laboratories’ anatomical virtual reality platform. These functionalities augment what is viewed by the virtual reality user with a custom anaglyph shader which in turn projects it to an external display. This allows a multitude of users to wear anaglyph “red/blue 3D glasses” and view the same anatomies the VR instructor is viewing in VR, while preserving the important 3D anatomical spatial relationships.