title: You can't touch this: touch-free navigation through radiological images.
abstract: Keyboards, mice, and touch screens are a potential source of infection or contamination in operating rooms, intensive care units, and autopsy suites. The authors present a low-cost prototype of a system, which allows for touch-free control of a medical image viewer. This touch-free navigation system consists of a computer system (IMac, OS X 10.6 Apple, USA) with a medical image viewer (OsiriX, OsiriX foundation, Switzerland) and a depth camera (Kinect, Microsoft, USA). They implemented software that translates the data delivered by the camera and a voice recognition software into keyboard and mouse commands, which are then passed to OsiriX. In this feasibility study, the authors introduced 10 medical professionals to the system and asked them to re-create 12 images from a CT data set. They evaluated response times and usability of the system compared with standard mouse/keyboard control. Users felt comfortable with the system after approximately 10 minutes. Response time was 120 ms. Users required 1.4 times more time to re-create an image with gesture control. Users with OsiriX experience were significantly faster using the mouse/keyboard and faster than users without prior experience. They rated the system 3.4 out of 5 for ease of use in comparison to the mouse/keyboard. The touch-free, gesture-controlled system performs favorably and removes a potential vector for infection, protecting both patients and staff. Because the camera can be quickly and easily integrated into existing systems, requires no calibration, and is low cost, the barriers to using this technology are low.
authors: Forensic Imaging and Virtopsy, Institute of ForensicMedicine, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland. lars.ebert@virtopsy.com
authors: Lars C
authors: LC
authors: Ebert
authors: Gary
authors: G
authors: Hatch
authors: Garyfalia
authors: G
authors: Ampanozi
authors: Michael J
authors: MJ
authors: Thali
authors: Steffen
authors: S
authors: Ross
mesh_terms: D001698:Biomedical Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D006801:Humans; D017053:Infection Control; D049250:Speech Recognition Software; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000193:education* / Q000379:methods*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface