Clinicians Exploit Motion-Capture Imaging Technology

The imaginative techniques of video-game makers are helping clinicians exploit the abundance of data from imaging technology. Advancements in translating scanned images into digital models to generate three-dimensional (3D) renderings--are yielding motion-capture techniques that convert data into virtual patients.

Such research is being performed at a few dedicated 3D imaging labs worldwide, such as the Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem Hospital (Jerusalem, Israel). The lab provides researchers a degree of focus not possible for the busy computed tomography (CT) imaging technicians and radiologists at most hospitals, according to Dr. Jacob Sosna, head of the CT unit in the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center's radiology department and director of its research and imaging laboratories. In-depth image postprocessing can yield new applications and techniques for use on patient scans, he added.

The Medical Center's lab is comprised of a medium-sized room with four workstations. Dr. Sosna noted that one of the lab's strengths is its close links to academia and industry, in addition to the medical center. He also reported that similar to motion capture, CT scanning is the product of a medical/entertainment industry collaboration. "The Beatles recorded with EMI [Electrical & Musical Industries], which was an industrial research company as well as a record label,” said Dr. Sosna, in Hadassah magazine. "The Beatles' massive success paid for EMI research that produced the CAT scanner.”

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Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem Hospital