"From Image Processing to Augmented Reality: Improving Patient Care"
Damion Shelton
1998 Beckman Scholar - University of Pittsburgh
Presently pursuing Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in Robotics
I have been interested in medical imaging ever since developing tools for automated 3D reconstructions of CT images while an undergraduate. Since then I have been involved in a number of projects that, to throw a broad net around their goals, try to make medical images more useful to clinicians and improve the quality of patient care. In this talk I will discuss two of these projects. The first is the Insight Toolkit (ITK), an open-source image segmentation and registration programming toolkit sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. Our lab contributed a novel shape-analysis routine to ITK that is currently being extended to automatically match anatomical features between MRI images of the brain. The second project I will discuss is the Sonic Flashlight, a novel method for displaying real-time ultrasound images in situ, allowing a physician to "interact" with the images during minimally invasive operations such as catheter placement and needle biopsy.
Damion Shelton is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2001 with degrees in Bioengineering and History and Philosophy of Science. While an undergraduate, he spent 4 years working with Professor Ken Fischer developing computational tools for analyzing load transfer in the human forearm. This work motivated his current graduate studies under the guidance of George Stetten, whose lab recently completed a three-year project developing medical image analysis tools for the Insight Toolkit (ITK) program sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. Damion's current research is examining the psychophysical aspects of a new augmented reality tool for medicine, the Sonic Flashlight. In addition to research, he has twice been a co-instructor for a graduate image analysis course designed around ITK. His outside interests include Irish fiddle, long-distance bicycle touring, and aviation