eascaping-blog

[eascaping-blog]

Biofabrication Surgery Simulator

Biofabrication is a revolutionized technology in medical area. It combines the 3D printing technique and bio-technology together to solve the traumatic tissue damage problem. At current stage, this technology needs a range of people to cooperate to complete the tissue printing, such as material experts, IT experts, biomedical researcher or mechanic engineer. However, in the medical scenario, because it would be impossible for surgeons to understand a range of different fields, so how surgeon can easily interact with this advanced technology becomes a new challenge.

 Modern technology has brought new interaction method to the world. This makes the surgeons’ intervention much easier. Therefore, in this article, I will present how surgeon can intervene the 3D tissue printing technology by using the Biofabrication Surgery Simulator.

 Issue Targeting

 In the hospital, the surgeon needs to have an accurate plan before the implant surgery. Except for the well-planned procedures, the most important part is the perfect implant tissue. Although the Biofabrication is an effective solution to help doctors to create the customized tissue frame, however, the limit is that how the doctors, who don’t have 3D modelling or engineering background, can access to the advanced technique.

 In fact, the common procedure of doctors’ diagnosis and the Biofabrication technique is analysing patients’ scan data. However, the shortage of this procedure is over reliance on the scan result. Additionally, the doctors may have the distinct view from the scanning picture The printed tissue should be perfectly suit for the affected part, and this should be prepared before the surgery. While, normally, the doctors need to adjust their surgery plan and the implant tissue after directly seeing the broken part. And because the tissue is a 3D frame shape item, so this makes the conflict that the surgeon is difficult to modify printed tissue accurately only based on naked eye observation in the operation room.

 Therefore, how surgeon can use the Biofabrication technology by themselves, and how they can create a perfect printed tissue suit for the surgery are the problems that need to be solved.

 Resolution

 To resolve the problem above, the key is to target the intervention point that the the doctor can access. The common point that the doctors and printing procedure is handling scanning data, and this is the most significant step of the creation of printing tissue. Besides, due to the doctors cannot modify the tissue during the surgery, so the most efficient way is to modify the tissue 3D Model before the printing. Therefore, the first technique need to be developed is remodelling 3D model that generate from scanning data.

 Nowadays, the Virtual Reality (VR) technology is wildly used in a range of areas. This is an advanced technology that can immerse people into a whole artificial environment. The highlight of this technology is that it can bring people into a simulated world that computer created. While, in the current scenario, since the doctors cannot directly see the affected part in the patients’ body, they can use the scanning data to create the 3D model, and observe the wound in 3D image through VR devices.

The second technique that need to be developed is remodelling. In the virtual environment, the doctors could use their hand to zoom for better inspection. To implement this purpose, we can use the gesture tracking devices to track doctors hand gesture, and instantly send the image to the glasses, so that the doctors can have a real-time interaction with the 3D model. In terms of model modification, the computer should automatically generate the 3D model of the wound. Then the doctor would follow their surgery plan to operate on the wound part, the computer would accordingly calculate the changes and assist the doctors to finish the modelling. Finally, the modified model would be printed in 3D Bio-printer.

 Benefits and Limits

 By using the Biofabrication Surgery Simulator, the surgeons can easily control the shape of replacement tissue by themselves. It may bring several benefits. Firstly, the surgeons would have a solid image to observe the affected part, so that they can figure out the actual situation in patients’ body before the surgery. Secondly, the replacement tissue would be perfectly fit the affected part, and also the surgeon does not have to modify the tissue during the surgery. Last but not least, the simulator can help predict the potential risk before surgery, this would significantly raise the success rate of operation.

 Meanwhile, there are some limits should be noticed. Except for the 3D printing technique, the gesture control and virtual reality techniques are the key parts of the whole simulation process. Nevertheless, the precision of the control can could be the limit at this moment. The the real-time remodelling process could be also hard to implement on interaction level. All these techniques could be combined together until they are developed completely accurate on responding time, resolution and interaction level etc.

     Reference:

1.     VR with hand tracking: http://www.cio.com/article/2859213/gadgets/facebooks-oculus-vr-adds-hand-tracking-3d-modelling-knowhow-with-acquisitions.html

2.     Doctor image: http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/08/oculussurgeon-100373870-large.jpg

3.     Leap Motion: https://www.leapmotion.com/product/vr

[eascaping-blog]

Mia Woodfuff on TED

[eascaping-blog]

Biofabrication Lab

[eascaping-blog]

3D printing

[eascaping-blog]

Unreal Engine, a solution to VR production...

[eascaping-blog]

Audio and VR

[eascaping-blog]

Reaper Audio Workstation

[eascaping-blog]

Unreal Engine

[eascaping-blog]

The demo that uses Unreal Engine

[eascaping-blog]

VR Glasses   Oculus Rift

[eascaping-blog]

Leap Motion has released VR solution with Oculus.

[eascaping-blog]

The purpose of VR is to lead users into a simulated space, making them sense the virtual world as much as the real world. Through this lab visit, I figure out that the VR experience is not only taking experiencers into a virtual image world, however, the auditory element is also one significant component that helps to build up the virtual world.

 The first stop of the visit is Wesley Heard introducing us the 3D modelling tools and 3D engine in a VR game. Basically, he utilizes Autodesk 3D Max to model the virtual environment and then, combines the model with the Unreal Engine. The 3DMax is widely used in 3D modelling field. It is not difficult to use, and has powerful cross-platform ability. In terms of the Unreal Engine, this is an open source image processing engine, which allows the developer to develop a VR game, video or some other 3D product with its support. The project that Wesley is doing now is a horror-theme VR game, he uses the tools above to develop the experience and uses the Oculus Rift, which is an advanced VR glasses, to demonstrate the outcomes.

 The Oculus Rift is one of the most popular VR image demonstration solutions in VR field. It provides the immersive visual experience to the experiencer and also provides convenient developing kit to the developers.

                        The next stop is the sound effect designer Nathan Corporal. He introduced us how to handle VR scenario sound effects. We sense our tangible world via visual image and auditory sound, so the VR world is supposed to be the same. The image aspect can be achieved by 3D modelling and graphics engine. However, the difference between the simulated digital sound and real world sound is that in the real world, people can hear sound from any direction, but the digital sound only has two channels. To enhance the VR experience, the sound should effect should be the 3D positional audio. Therefore, Nathan told us about the theory and the tools that he uses in order to record and processing the 3D audio.

  Nathan told us that there are still a lot of problems have to be solved when it comes to recording and editing 3D audio. At current stage, the solution that he is using is Reaper and FMOD. The Reaper is a digital audio processing workstation produced by Cockos. It provides audio recoding, editing, and special audio effect rendering functions to help audio designers to deal with complex audio production. The FMOD is another auditory processing workstation software. Different from the Reaper, the FMOD can debug and use code to editing audio files. Besides, the most fascinating function is that it has 3D sound engine to process the positional audio signal and simulates the acoustic source. With these two software, producing 3D positional audio becomes accessible.

  At last, Wesley lets us experienced the Oculus Rift. I experienced the Unreal Engine demo ‘Showdown’. This is a quite short VR game video demo, but the VR effect is good. The glass can detect the head's movement and relatively change the visual angle. In addition, 3D positional audio also applied in this video.

[eascaping-blog]

Amazing 3D printing application in biomedical area.

The Biofabrication Lab consists of experts from different backgrounds. They have material researcher, mechanical engineer, computing engineer, physical scientist and biological scientist etc.

 The visit was divided into two parts. The first part was a brief introduction on 3D printing technology, bilateral and working principal. The 3D printing technology has developed fast in recent years. From micro-fabrication printing to house construction, this technology has attracted researcher and investors attention. In the Biofabrication Lab, they use the FDA approved biocompatible polymer fibers as material to print the replacement tissue. Basically, in the medical facilities, doctors can model the tissue based on the patient’s scanning data, and then implant the printed tissue into patient’s body. Due to doctors can put the patient’s own tissue cells in the interspace of the tissue frame, and additionally, the biomaterial can degrade after a certain period, so that the patient can restore the original tissue through this technique.

 The second part of the visit is observing the lab working process. Professor Woodruff and Doctor Sean Powell showed us several generation’s 3D printers. They explained this components of the current 3D printer, how to transfer scanning data to 3D model code that the printer can use. They also introduced how they deal with the biomaterial with the printer. There were some printed tissue and fibres enable us to touch and directly see how the completed tissue look like.