And it needs to catch up with the 21st century and start seeing the world as a round, three-dimensional place. The answer? Give it the ol' " Tupac at Coachella 2012" treatment and make holograms, of course!

At least that's the idea behind a crop of new biomedical imaging projects. California-based startup EchoPixel is the latest company to jump into the fray, with its new True3D Viewer. The FDA recently approved the software platform for use in diagnostics and surgical planning.

Most biomedical imaging techniques require doctors to create 3-D visualizations out of a dataset of 2-D images gathered by a CT scanner, MRI, ultrasound, or other devices. It can be a tedious and time-consuming process. But more importantly, this imperfect system can't always represent patient tissue and organs with enough accuracy or precision, creating holes in the pictures—more literal than figurative—that make it difficult for doctors to decide how to best diagnose and treat patients.