Using Kinect and a Tablet to See Inside Your Skull

This is wild and was done in the Microsoft UK research office.  They are using actual MRI scans and putting them in the proto-type head.  This way they can see how the tumor they are looking for is located and can get a 3-D view.  We have seen Kinect wor

This is wild and was done in the Microsoft UK research office.  They are using actual MRI scans and putting them in the proto-type head.  This way they can see how the tumor they are looking for is located and can get a 3-D view.  We have seen Kinect work with a million dollar Davinci robot for surgery and now this.  Amazing…BD

Using a touch screen tablet, some duct tape, brain scans, and the newest Kinect application programming interface (API) called Fusion, a team from Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK built an augmented reality system aimed at helping brain surgeons.

Ben Glocker, a post-doc researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, recently showed a prototype of the setup to IEEE Spectrum during Microsoft TechFest 2013. In the video above, he discusses how the team duct-taped a USB-powered touchscreen device to the Kinect Fusion, which allows them to 3D model just about anything.

As Glocker demonstrated, the system captures the patient’s skull in 3D and then incorporates that info with two-dimensional MRI brain scans that doctors took of the patient in preparation for surgery. Those combined images form an augmented reality: When surgeons look at the patient’s head in the operating room, they also see images of the brain underneath.

http://mashable.com/2013/03/12/hacked-kinect-skull/