Live ECG readings using Google Glass in emergency situations.

Most sudden cardiac problems require rapid treatment to preserve life. In this regard, electrocardiograms (ECG) shown on vital parameter monitoring systems help medical staff to detect problems. In some situations, such monitoring systems may display information in a less than convenient way for medical staff. For example, vital parameters are displayed on large screens outside the field of view of a surgeon during cardiac surgery. This may lead to losing time and to mistakes when problems occur during cardiac operations. In this paper we present a novel approach to display vital parameters such as the second derivative of the ECG rhythm and heart rate close to the field of view of a surgeon using Google Glass. As a preliminary assessment, we run an experimental study to verify the possibility for medical staff to identify abnormal ECG rhythms from Google Glass. This study compares 6 ECG rhythms readings from a 13.3 inch laptop screen and from the prism of Google Glass. Seven medical residents in internal medicine participated in the study. The preliminary results show that there is no difference between identifying these 6 ECG rhythms from the laptop screen versus Google Glass. Both allow close to perfect identification of the 6 common ECG rhythms. This shows the potential of connected glasses such as Google Glass to be useful in selected medical applications.

Facilitating medical information search using Google Glass connected to a content-based medical image retrieval system.

Wearable computing devices are starting to change the way users interact with computers and the Internet. Among them, Google Glass includes a small screen located in front of the right eye, a camera filming in front of the user and a small computing unit. Google Glass has the advantage to provide online services while allowing the user to perform tasks with his/her hands. These augmented glasses uncover many useful applications, also in the medical domain. For example, Google Glass can easily provide video conference between medical doctors to discuss a live case. Using these glasses can also facilitate medical information search by allowing the access of a large amount of annotated medical cases during a consultation in a non-disruptive fashion for medical staff. In this paper, we developed a Google Glass application able to take a photo and send it to a medical image retrieval system along with keywords in order to retrieve similar cases. As a preliminary assessment of the usability of the application, we tested the application under three conditions (images of the skin; printed CT scans and MRI images; and CT and MRI images acquired directly from an LCD screen) to explore whether using Google Glass affects the accuracy of the results returned by the medical image retrieval system. The preliminary results show that despite minor problems due to the relative stability of the Google Glass, images can be sent to and processed by the medical image retrieval system and similar images are returned to the user, potentially helping in the decision making process.

Enhanced visualization of pulmonary perfusion in 4D dual energy CT images.

Pulmonary embolism (PE) affects up to 600,000 patients and contributes to at least 100,000 deaths every year in the United States alone. Diagnosis of PE can be difficult as most symptoms are unspecific. Computed Tomography (CT) angiography is the reference for diagnosing PE. CT angiography produces grayscale images with darker areas representing any mass filling defects, making the analysis of the images difficult. This article demonstrates a method using the combination of energy levels in Dual Energy CT images to highlight the presence of PE in the lung. The results show that pairing different energy levels from 40 to 140 keV can increase the contrast between well perfused areas and underperfused areas of the lung. In addition, the visualization used in the current study complies with the window/level settings usually employed by radiologists.

Difference of perceiving object softness during palpation through single-node and multi-node contacts.

Virtual Reality (VR) simulators can offer alternatives for training procedures in the medical field. Most current VR simulators consider single-node contact for interacting with an object to convey displacement and force on a discrete mesh. However, a single-node contact does not closely simulate palpation, which requires a surface made of a multi-node contact to touch a soft object. Thus, we hypothesize that the softness of a deformable object (such as a virtual breast phantom) palpated through a single-node contact would be perceived differently from that of the same phantom palpated through a multi-node contact with various force arrays. We conducted a study to investigate this hypothesis. Using a co-located VR setup that aligns visual and haptic stimuli onto a spatial location, we tested 15 human participants under conditions of both visual and haptic stimuli available and only visual (or haptic) stimulus available. In a trial, each participant palpated and discriminated two virtual breast phantoms of same softness through different contacts with varying force arrays. The results of this study revealed that virtual breast phantoms palpated through a single-node contact were constantly perceived harder than their counterparts palpated through a multi-node contact with varying force arrays, when visual stimuli were available. These results imply a constraint for developing a VR system of training palpation.

A viscoelastic model of a breast phantom for real-time palpation.

Palpation of soft tissues helps to diagnose varying diseases within the tissues. Using a phantom, the current method of training palpation lacks for feedback of the training. Similar to a robot-assisted surgical system, a virtual reality (VR) system could be potential for such training due to its interactive nature. In such a VR system, studies revealed the observation that the human perception of objects is insensitive to subtle discrepancies in a simulation. Based upon this observation, we propose a real-time viscoelastic model of a breast phantom (as soft tissues). The model consists of a surface membrane and an inside gel. We evaluate this model through a comparison with a Finite Element Method (FEM) model, featuring physical parameters and different force contacts. The results show that the model can handle multi vertex force contact on an arbitrary location and yields reasonable accurate deformation compared to the FEM model.