It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller is hugely popular amongst gamers, selling its way into the Guinness book of records. But the Xbox controller is being researched and experimented with in the medical field, with surgeons seeing if they can use the technology as a substitute for expensive surgical simulators.
Admittedly, the thought of a surgeon prepping me for surgery while playing the latest Halo title is a little daunting, but Dr Tom Lendvay, who is the assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington has raised a good point: medical equipment is expensive.
This is where the Lendvay’s research proves promising. The Dr’s studies have revealed warming up on a virtual reality simulator can improve a surgeon’s performance when it comes to operating. He believes by gaming before prep, it jump starts the parts of a brain that are critical when performing surgery, such as memory, spatial relations and motor skills.
The qualm wouldn’t exist if medical simulators weren’t so expensive, as Ledvay points out.
“If you can pay for a video game versus $100,000 for a simulator, that’s all you need to know.”
The interest in using gaming technology in the medical field isn’t all new as Dr Brian Ross currently uses the Xbox 360s video chat capabilities to teach students, successfully avoiding thousands of dollars being spent on licensing, equipment and technical support. He trialled it by teaching the students how to install a breathing tube, and hasn’t stopped since.
Ross intends on taking this concept to another level by incorporating the Xbox connect motion controller in a virtual environment that will help stimulate operations performed in an emergency room. Playing as avatars, students would use the Kinect controller’s motion sensors in a “very realistic” environment to learn and practice different procedures.
The controller technology is even being adapted by Howard Chizeck, an electrical engineering professor of the UW Biorobotics Lab.
“It’s a really great product where there’s a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things,” he says. “It’s a very enabling device. It’s the right thing at the right time.”
When working with surgical robots, theres no responsive feedback to the surgeon, leaving them unable to feel what they’re cutting or suturing. They are guided by 2D images alone.
With Kinect technology, Chizwick, colleague Blake Hannaford and graduate student Fredrick Ryan hope to create three dimensional models of patients that will provide resistance feedback through surgical controls.
“Kinect gives us a really low-cost test bed for developing and testing the idea,” Chizeck said.
With the popularity of gaming technology breaking into new fields, the hope is that researchers and engineers can harness their relatively inexpensive technology to better the field of medicine. Who would’ve thouht gaming could be healthy?
