“Wave your hands in the air like you don’t care!” or so the phrase goes in one of the more popular dance tracks of yore, and I would loathe to be operated upon by a surgeon who listens to that song when he/she employs Kinect technology during my surgery. After all, I would not want to be spliced six ways to Sunday due to an overenthusiastic moment, even by one as brainy as a surgeon, do I? St. Thomas’ Hospital in London see surgeons piloting a new “touchless” technology which is said to be able to assist them during complex aneurysm procedures (apart from building nanosatellites – making Kinect one broadly useful technology).
Developed in conjunction with Microsoft, King’s College, and Lancaster University in the UK, this particular technology is capable of taking a current 3D image of a patient’s anatomy, turning it into 2D images of different angles and sections of the 3D image, where the entire slew of them are able to be manipulated using one’s hand gestures as well as voice commands, now how about that? This benefits surgeons as they can manipulate images without losing sterility, or having to rely on assistance from a nurse.