Shachar “Vice” Weis, founder and CEO of Packet39, the developers of custom software and hardware solutions, came up with an MRI slicer to make navigating the data from scans a lot easier.
Packet39 is a team of professional software developers and academics who “thrive in the space between code and the physical world and we develop solutions that sense, manipulate and move around in the environment.” They’ve worked on projects such as an augmented reality business card to a VR power plant airlock system for training new employees.
However, founder and CEO Shachar “Vice” Weis recently created a video showcasing his latest project. He has developed a way to easily walk through MRI data using a tablet and HTC’s VR controller, the Vive tracker.
Although Vice hasn’t explained his project in detail and promises more information “soon”, he does explain that he used Unity, the game development platform, a USB external display and a 3D printed adapter.
The result appears to be an intuitive way of easily looking at MRI data. Check it out in the video below:
How Does it Work? We Don’t Know… Yet
The excitement this short video churned up on Reddit proves how useful many people would find such an invention. Many believe it could advance how we use MRI data in medicine with suggestions that it could help surgeon’s practice before surgery.
However, the method is predominantly useful for navigating the huge amounts of data which an MRI scan produces. Walking through a human body could make a diagnosis a lot easier.
How it works, we’re still unsure of. But, the many sleuths on the internet have deduced that it works with a Vive attached to the back of a tablet which detects it position in space. Then, the plane of the tablet becomes the slicing plane for the 3D MRI scan reconstruction to be explored.
In Vice’s video, it appears there is no lag in the update speed but he also adds that this is just his first version. So, it may be that the resulting project is even more impressive than it appears. If you’re as intrigued as we are, visit the Packet39 website and stay tuned for their next blog post.
Source: Hackaday
License: The text of "Explore Your MRI Data With a Tablet, Vive Tracker, and a 3D Printed Adapter" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.