Home

Ophthalmology Peripheral Vision


Ophthalmology at ARI wish to develop an innovative, medical teaching aid for instructing students in ultrasound scanning methods. This involves placing a pen-like scanning probe on the eye in various orientations, thereby projecting an elongated, rectangular, beam of ultrasound to the back of the eye. (See (left) movie for example.)

Conveying the different scanner orientations and associated terminology has proved difficult in the past, and Ophthalmology would like to build a solution which employs OSGpresent3D and bespoke tracking methods. Discussions are at an early stage, and a couple of approaches have been mooted.

  1. Writing a driver which uses head and hand tracking, to manipulate an eye model, a probe, and the camera view, in the Present3D environment. This is a slight extension of the already discussed ideas taken from Johnny Lee's demonstrated, "Wii hacks."
  2. Building a bespoke peripheral interface involving a globe, slightly larger than a tennis ball which is sensitive to pitch/yaw/tilt, as well as the orientation and proximity of a secondary pen-like wand. These peripherals would communicate their data by bluetooth to the host machine.

The aim is that the lecturer would be able, in the present3D lecturing environment, to demonstrate the various orientations of the probe answering different clinical procedures. It is also hoped that by means of head tracking, it might be possible to simulate present3D's stereo-3D display on a single, mono screen; thereby releasing the software to be used for student out-of-hours practice, and further library contexts not directly related to Ophthalmology. Assuming stereo-3D display on a single, mono screen is effective, it is seen as an important development for attracting funding from a broader range of disciplines.

In this project I am liasing with Dr.Mohamed Mustafa, who in turn will liase with an Electrical Engineer building the peripherals.

Here a set of video clips which informed our thinking by suggesting what may be feasible.

Off topic, but slightly relevant..

Dr.Angus Thompson expressed a desire that MRI volumes could be projected into the middle of a discussion. This would be doable using Augmented Reality [AR] and several of the spectacles supplied by Vuzix - trouble is. although they can display side-by-side stereo, they cost £250 a pair.