3DLab

Vanitha Sankaranarayanan stood in awe, in the operating room, as she observed as a neurosurgeon perform brain surgery guided by critical information from a diffusion tenser imaging (DTI) brain scan – the type of image she creates – illuminating the brain’s essential motor pathways and where they were in relation to the tumor. “It was inspiring to see that what I am doing is crucial,” says Sankaranarayanan, an image analysis and visualization lead at UCSF’s 3D Lab. She observed this surgery shortly after she joined the lab in 2009, and it has influenced her work ever since.

No two hearts are the same. And no one knows that better than Shezhang Lin, MD. Lin spends his days creating detailed, interactive, models of patient’s hearts at UCSF’s 3DLab. His 3D heart models help surgeons visualize a patient’s heart before surgery, to better understand and address the unique case at hand, to plan the best surgical approach, and to help explain complex procedures to patients and their families.