Biomedical Visualization
Our approach to low-cost, reconfigurable, rapidly-deployable displays, affords new applications for immersive and augmented environments. We are exploring ways in which the technology can assist the medical community to carry out biomedical research, conduct surgeries, and diagnose patients.
One approach is to tightly couple sensor networks with the cluster of rendering devices (projectors), to create an interactive, intelligent, and assistive environment. For example, by tracking the position and orientation of a doctor in a room, high-resolution, x-ray layouts can be projected to an appropriate surface from the display infrastructure upon request.
Image data captured during a minimally invasive procedure can be rendered in the doctor's field of view upon request, or projected directly on the patient, registered with the three-dimensional scene. Because the environment is intelligently monitoring the scene, augmentation of complex procedures can enhance the doctor's focus on diagnosis or surgery without learning how to use new specialized equipment.
The same approach to interactive, augmented spaces, has application in monitoring and assisting the disabled or elderly and can be used in everyday tasks such as projecting a users desktop on any surface as the user moves in his/her office.
Fundamental problems involve traditional visualization tasks including volumetric rendering and appropriate user interfaces. In addition, we are working on calibration of such a system, active tracking of users, and behavior recognition and interpretation for "virtual" user-interfaces in such an augmented environment.