In keeping with the January ritual of reflecting on the past year’s accomplishments, we’re eager to tell you about a very special event that Microsoft Research Cambridge hosted in November: the Body Tracking in Healthcare workshop (opens in new tab). This occasion celebrated the completion of a two-year collaboration between Microsoft Research Cambridge (opens in new tab) and Lancaster University (opens in new tab), during which we explored the use of touchless interactions in surgical settings, allowing images to be viewed, controlled, and manipulated without physical contact via the Kinect for Windows (opens in new tab) sensor.
Surgeons use Kinect for Windows-based system to view and manipulate X-rays and scans without physical contact.
The Kinect for Windows-based system, which has been widely covered in the popular press, enables surgeons to navigate through and manipulate X-rays and scans during operations, literally with a wave of the hands, without touching the non-sterile surface of a mouse or keyboard. It’s a prime example of the burgeoning field of natural user interface (NUI), which promises to change our relationship with today’s ubiquitous devices.
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The workshop brought together experts from academia and industry to discuss the use of Kinect for Windows in medicine—in applications that extend well beyond the operating room. Kinect’s body tracking abilities are already being harnessed for clinical assessments of, for example, children with motor disabilities. One talk at the workshop demonstrated a system in which youngsters with cerebral palsy play simple computer games while Kinect for Windows monitors their movements, providing data that physicians can use to assess the state of the disease.
Other researchers are exploring ways to use Kinect for Windows to evaluate the damage caused by strokes and to create and monitor game-based rehabilitation exercises, many of which can be performed by stroke patients in their own homes. Still other presentations showed how Kinect can assist in diagnosing disorders of the brain and nervous system, including Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. We even saw how the Kinect camera and motion sensors can be utilized to compensate for patient movement during medical imaging—a boon to anyone who’s had to undergo repeat X-rays because he or she breathed during the first imaging.
We hope to publish a comprehensive report on the projects shown at the workshop, either via a special issue of a journal or in a book. Meanwhile, a cover story (opens in new tab) in the January 2014 issue of Communications of the ACM features some of this work.
—Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche (opens in new tab), Senior Research Program Manager, Microsoft Research Connections EMEA; Stewart Tansley (opens in new tab), Director, Microsoft Research Connections; Abigail Sellen (opens in new tab), Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Kenton O’Hara (opens in new tab), Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge
Learn more
- Body Tracking in Healthcare (opens in new tab)
- Kinect for Windows (opens in new tab)
- Touchless Interaction in Medical Imaging (opens in new tab)
- Touchless Interaction in Surgery (opens in new tab)
- First for touchless technology in vascular surgery (opens in new tab)
- Microsoft Research Cambridge (opens in new tab)
- Natural User Interface at Microsoft Research Connections (opens in new tab)