A new technology has been developed which will enable doctors to see inside patient’s skin without using the scalpel. The new augmented reality tech displays the patient's internals right on the body. The system called, ProjectDP, allows medical examinations such as MRI data and CT scans to be displayed directly on the patient's body which moves along with the patient's movements.
Developer of ProjectDR and a computing science graduate student, Ian Watts said, "We wanted to create a system that would show clinicians a patient's internal anatomy within the context of the body". He developed this technology with fellow graduate student Michael Fiest.
As stated, the technology includes a motion-tracking system using infrared cameras and markers on the patient's body, as well as a projector to display the images.
However, Watts explained that the difficult part was to have the image track properly on the patient's body, despite their movements. The solution for them was custom software written by Watts that got all of the components working together.
Watts added, "There are lots of applications for this technology, including in teaching, physiotherapy, laparoscopic surgery, and even surgical planning".
According to the report, ProjectDR also has the capacity to present segmented images--for example, only the lungs or only the blood vessels--depending on what a clinician is interested in seeing. For now, Watts is reportedly working on refining ProjectDR to improve the system's automatic calibration and to add components such as depth sensor.
ProjectDR was presented at the Virtual Reality Software and Technology Symposium in Gothenburg, Sweden.
(with ANI Inputs)
