CASEBOOK – 5 easy steps to creating great medical presentations

1. Installing

Download your free copy of Casebook from www.mirada-casebook.com and follow the simple installation steps.

2. Loading the data

Once the Casebook software has been installed, open PowerPoint to create a presentation. There will be a Mirada Medical tab (PowerPoint 2007) or toolbar (PowerPoint 2003). The Mirada Medical addin contains three buttons, Add Casebook, Import Data and Edit Casebook. Select Add Casebook, and the Import Data screen appears. Select Import Single File or Import Directory to browse for the file or directory you wish to add as the base image data (for example, CT) and again for the Overlay Image Data (for example, PET). You may also select, if you wish, a single series of DICOM data as the base image layer. When files or directories have been selected, click OK. The files will be loaded into Casebook and placed on the slide. By default, the data is resampled to be aligned to the patient axis. The data can be loaded in its original orientation by unchecking the Axis-align data to patient box at import. This may reduce the memory required by Casebook for non-axis aligned data.

3. Editing Casebook

Select Edit Casebook to view the imported images. Several features are available to adjust the display. The view layout may be changed via the layout button in the upper right corner of the screen. This is defaulted to All Views, but will change to indicate the currently viewed layout. You may triangulate by moving the cross-hair position.

The left mouse button is, by default, set to adjust the window and level. By selecting the appropriate tools from the toolbar, its behaviour can be modified.

The middle mouse button can be used adjust the pan, the scroll wheel adjusts the currently viewed slice and the right mouse button adjusts the zoom. When the Casebook slide is displayed during a slide show, image manipulation tools are available to the presenter. Adjustments made during an editing session will be shown when the slideshow is run, but are not saved when the file is saved.

4. Using bookmarks

The view state (cross-hair position, slice, view layout, window & level, transparency etc) can be saved in the form of bookmarks during editing mode. These bookmarks are saved when the PowerPoint presentation is saved, allowing you to quickly jump back to key locations in the data when presenting your slideshow. To add a bookmark, navigate to the point of interest and adjust the visualisation as desired, then click Add. A dialog will appear to let you edit the bookmark title. Having entered the bookmark title, click OK to add the bookmark. Bookmarks can only be created in the Casebook editor.

If you no longer want a bookmark, select that bookmark and click Delete to remove it. Move Up and Move Down can be used to rearrange the order of the bookmarks in the bookmark list. These functions are only available in the Casebook editor.

5. Saving your presentation

Click the Microsoft Office Button and then click Save As (PowerPoint 2007) or File à Save As in the toolbar (PowerPoint 2003), name the file, and select Presentation as file type. Click Save. Casebook data are saved within the PowerPoint file in a lossy compressed format.

And finally, run your professional, accurate presentation and engage your audience!