NCSA Event Looks at Technology With Potential
Greg Kline, News Gazette
As published May 11, 2007
A surgeon getting ready to perform a complex procedure on your brain or spine in the future might practice first on a 3-D re-creation that looks - and feels - like the real thing. For now, University of Illinois researchers are employing the technology, combining a high-resolution stereoscopic display and haptics in computerized simulations, for training new surgeons and for refreshing the skills of veterans in the field. Haptics are computer interfaces where users get force and tactile feedback in interacting with digital objects, kind of a souped-up version of force-feedback gaming mice, pads and other devices.
The 3-D models of brains and spines in the simulations developed so far are created from medical scans of real patients. Building a model from such data takes several days of processing now, UI Professor Pat Banerjee said Thursday.
But the researchers are working on reducing the time to a few hours, which could make the technology feasible for pre-operation preparations.
"These are fairly complex procedures," Banerjee said. "When you're actually doing it on the patient, it's not that easy."
The system was one of the technologies highlighted Thursday at a workshop marking the second year of the UI and National Center for Supercomputing Applications TRECC Accelerator Project.
The project is supposed to spur the commercialization of UI research sooner, transfer research technologies into the Navy faster and promote economic development in Illinois by generating new businesses. The Office of Naval Research funds the UI's Technology Research, Education and Commercialization Center, or TRECC, which the NCSA runs.
The accelerator program provides funding of up to $40,000 to UI researchers at the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses to help fast-track their technology development and commercialization.
Banerjee, a UI Chicago professor, has started a company to market his technology, as have other UI researchers who spoke at the workshop. NCSA Executive Director Danny Powell said the project has yielded four businesses startups or licensing deals in two years, with a couple of others in the pipeline.
TRECC project manager E.J. Grabert said the program works closely with UI economic development and technology licensing experts "to identify those emerging technologies that are about to blast off" for funding.
UI electrical and computer engineering Professor James Eden outlined a new light-emitting technology employing common aluminum foil and aluminum oxide in a robust, inexpensive system that could put tiny light sources by the thousands on a chip, on flexible materials and on large surfaces as well.
The technology might find its way into everything from light-emitting bandages for treating diseases such as psoriasis to the screens of future-generation cell phones.
Among the other technologies highlighted were self-healing paint to stop rust on naval vessels and a process for extracting a fetal heart scan as early as 12 weeks into pregnancy for diagnosis of cardiac defects.
NCSA officials also announced three projects to be funded this year, two on the Urbana-Champaign campus and one in Chicago. They include technologies for rooting out computer software bugs and for increasing by orders of magnitude the insulating capacity of thermal windows.
James Weyhenmeyer, UI interim vice president for technology and economic development, was the keynote speaker at the workshop.
Copyright, 2007, The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. Used by permission.