{"id":206141,"date":"2019-03-11T05:22:59","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T09:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=206141"},"modified":"2019-03-11T05:22:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T09:22:59","slug":"alberta-researchers-combine-x-rays-virtual-reality-for-new-medical-treatments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/03\/11\/alberta-researchers-combine-x-rays-virtual-reality-for-new-medical-treatments\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta researchers combine X rays, virtual reality for new medical treatments"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
No, they’re not X-ray specs. (Shutterstock Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

EDMONTON \u2014 No, they’re not X-ray specs.<\/p>\n

But a University of Alberta team has come up with a way to combine medical imaging with virtual reality to help clinicians locate and understand what’s happening inside their patients’ bodies as they treat them.<\/p>\n

“One of the classic problems you always hear about when clinicians are training is that you treat the person, not the X-ray,” said Greg Kawchuk, a professor in the University of Alberta’s physical therapy department. “Here’s a way to unite those two domains.”<\/p>\n

Kawchuk and his colleagues have figured out how to use a commercially available set of virtual reality goggles to help doctors or other professionals view an X-ray superimposed on a patient’s body. They can align the image with the patient in front of them.<\/p>\n

That not only allows clinicians to get a more precise idea of where the problem is and what it might be, it also allows them to bring the patient into the equation.<\/p>\n

“The problem with X-rays has always been you take this thing (and) read it in a different room completely separated from the patient and their experiences,” Kawchuk said.<\/p>\n

“(A patient) is more than just their image. There’s stories to be listened to. There’s context.”<\/p>\n

Kawchuk imagines how a conversation might go with a doctor using the goggles:<\/p>\n

“Where does it hurt? Here? OK, now I see it in the image that goes along with it when I poke you here.”<\/p>\n

The goggles take advantage of recent innovations in virtual reality that allow a wearer to see the virtual world and the actual world at the same time.<\/p>\n

“You see what you normally see and (the goggles) add stuff into there.”<\/p>\n

It sounds like a simple matter to make the added “stuff” an X-ray. But it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Bodies aren’t flat. To accurately map an image onto the curves in a person’s back or chest, Kawchuk and his co-workers had to figure out how to distort the flat X-ray to account for them.<\/p>\n

They’ve managed to get the image to within eight millimetres of the exact location. That’s not close enough for surgical applications, but it is for many medical purposes, including teaching.<\/p>\n

New, higher-resolution goggles are hitting the market all the time, Kawchuk added. And artificial intelligence programs may help users more closely line up image with reality.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he said, the technique might be available as an app using a generic X-ray that may not match a patient’s body exactly, but is still useful.<\/p>\n

“It’s early days,” said Kawchuk. “It think it’s going to be pretty ubiquitous as the years go by.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014 No, they’re not X-ray specs. But a University of Alberta team has come up with a way to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":206156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","mauthors-bob-weber","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}