MFA Graduate, 1997

Alan Millman

MS Graduate, 1998

Darren Thompson

PhD Graduate, 2000 (Computer Science)

Paul Neumann

MS Graduate, 1997

Michelle Afenya

MFA Graduate, 1989

Fred Dech (1960 - 2011)

MS Graduate

Blake Drolson

Former MFA Candidate

Rakesh Raju

Former Adjunct Associate Professor

Ellen Sandor

PhD Graduate, 2004

Kang B. Sun

EVL Affiliated Faculty Research Associate Professor (retired) MFA Graduate, 1989

Mary Rasmussen

MFA Graduate, 2006

Poliana Tassini

Corbin Frame

MS Graduate, 2007

Nicholas Schwarz

Former MFA Graduate Student

Dubi Kaufmann

PhD Graduate, 2018

Victor Mateevitsi

MS Graduate, 2013

Qin Li

PhD Graduate, 2016

Thomas Marrinan

This exhibition presents the work of current and past graduate students of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (art)n Laboratory and EVL have collaborated on the development of the first real-time, stereoscopic hardcopy output of virtual reality applications - the ImmersaGram (IGram). 

Since the development of the CAVE Virtual Reality Theatre in 1992, EVL&rsquo;s major area of expertise has been the research and development of software, hardware, networking and communications tools for virtual reality. The results of this research directly addresses a broad range of information visualization issues along a wide spectrum of disciplines from art, architecture and science to medicine, engineering and education. The IGrams are intended to capture the essence of the virtual experience, preserve the sense of immersion and act as an extension of the original artwork into the domain of virtual hardcopy.

ImmersaGram Show Postcard

ImmersaGrams: Virtual Reality Snapshots

ThinkQuest is an annual contest that challenges Students 12 - 19 to use the Internet as a collaborative, interactive teaching and learning tool. 

EVL students and faculty demonstrated three collaborative VR projects networked between two ImmersaDesks - one in Washington at the conference site and one at EVL:
<ul>
<li>The N.I.C.E. Project, a collaborative learning environment for children.</li>
<li>Virtual Temporal Bone, an educational medical application.</li>
<li>4-D Math, an educational application in mathematics.</li>
</ul> 

Three stand-alone art and culture projects were also exhibited - Mitologies, Las Meninas and Strait Dope.

ThinkQuest &rsquo;97

The International Grid (iGrid) 2000 exhibit, jointly sponsored and organized by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology at Indiana University (IU), University of Tokyo and Keio University, provided global connectivity to collaborators from Canada, Germany, Greece, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, USA and the CERN institute. 

iGrid 2000 was composed of 24 application demonstrations requiring high-speed networks, with emphasis on distributed computing, tele-immersion, large datasets, remote instrumentation, collaboration, cultural heritage, digital video, streaming media and high-definition television. An additional 3 proposals represented video teleconferencing enhancements. 

EVL and IU, members of NCSA&rsquo;s National Computational Science Alliance partnership, are working to advance the development of the International Technology Grid. The Grid is a prototype 21st century computational and information infrastructure, integrating high-performance computers, visualization environments, remote instruments, and massive databases via high-speed networks to support advanced applications. iGrid 2000 was a direct outgrowth of these efforts.

The International Grid (iGrid) 2000

EVL will host U.S. <a href="http://www.senate.gov/~durbin/">Senator Dick Durbin</a> and members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation at UIC on Saturday, January 10, 1998. CAVE and ImmersaDesk technologies, advanced applications, and tele-immersion collaborative experiences will be demonstrated. 

This presentation is part of a forum, the Technology Leadership Workshop, organized by Senator Durbin to highlight some of the technologies being developed in Illinois that will take the U.S. into the future.

Technology Leadership Workshop

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine will introduce biomedical tele-immersion into the curriculum of surgical residents beginning in July. The residents will participate in a unique research project to measure whether virtual reality technology, high-performance computing and high-speed networking cam improve medical education. With a new $1.04 million grant from the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, UIC researchers are developing and refining virtual models of the liver, <a href="http://www.ahs.uic.edu/ahs/php/section.php?id=309">pelvic floor</a> and <a href="http://www.ahs.uic.edu/ahs/php/section.php?id=300">temporal bone</a>, and studying the models&rsquo; impact on medical education and training. 

The project is a collaboration among researchers in the <a href="http://www.ahs.uic.edu/ahs/php/index.php?sitename=vrml">Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory</a> in UIC&rsquo;s College of Health and Human Development Sciences, the UIC College of Engineering&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory, the UIC College of Medicine&rsquo;s departments of surgery, head and neck surgery and medical education, as well as physicians in the colon and rectal surgery department at neighboring Cook County Hospital.

Biomedical Tele-Immersion with the College of Medicine

The international meeting, Science, Culture, and Education over Internet2, April 4 - 6, 2001 will be held at the Universidad T&eacute;cnica Federico Santa Mar&iacute;a, located in the historical city of Valpara&iacute;so, Chile. 

Integrating the scientific and university communities with applications of the next generation Internet are the central goals of Science, Culture, and Education over Internet2. 

The meeting will be broadcast in simultaneous time to the videoconference rooms of seven of the nine universities of REUNA Consortium that are part of Universidad Virtual (U. Austral de Chile, U. de Atacama, U. de Concepci&oacute;n, U. de La Serena, U. del B&iacute;o B&iacute;o, U. Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educaci&oacute;n and U. Tecnol&oacute;gica Metropolitana). 

EVLers, Brenda Silva, Javier Girado, and Greg Dawe will demonstrate Tele-immersion applications using an ImmersaDesk2 from the international meeting in Chile to UIC. Applications will include:
<ul>
<li>The Virtual Temporal Bone G2, Manipulation of Volumetric Patient Data in a Distributed Virtual Reality Environment, <a href="http://www.sbhis.uic.edu/VRML/">Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory</a>, UIC (Fred Dech)</li>
<li>Earthquake Hypocenters, Earthquake Tomography, Space Physics / Space Weather, EVL / UIC (Jason Leigh), <a href="http://160.94.61.144/dept/">Geology and Geophysics Department</a>, University of Minnesota (Paul Morin), <a href="http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/">Geology Department</a>, University of Michigan (Peter van Keken)</li>
</ul>

Science, Culture and Education over Internet2

In a truly &lsquo;hands on&rsquo; demonstration, a haptics-enhanced virtual reality device now on exhibit at SC&rsquo;02 in Baltimore, shows how surgeons and medical modelers working together in a virtual space can produce precise fitting, pre-fabricated surgical implants without costly molding, casting or sculpting steps. 

Using PARIS (Personal Augmented Reality Immersive System), a projection-based &lsquo;augmented&rsquo; virtual reality display developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a surgeon and medical modeler can view a three-dimensional model of a patient&rsquo;s computed tomography (CT) data, and collaboratively review, sculpt and &lsquo;virtually&rsquo; build an implant using their hands. 

PARIS is optimized to allow users to interact with the environment using a variety of tactile input devices. An authentic sensation of the implant sculpting process is achieved using SensAble Technologies&rsquo; PHANTOM force-feedback device. The PARIS display has excellent contrast and variable lighting that allows a user&rsquo;s hands to be seen immersed in the imagery. 

A medically advanced, albeit labor-intensive and costly method for designing and building pre-surgical implants in virtual reality was developed and implemented at UIC in 1996. This process can correct traumatic head injuries and restore normal facial appearance. Although it revolutionized the still-widely practiced method of fashioning implants in the operating room using heat producing and potentially tissue damaging acrylics, it exists largely as a cost prohibitive option in most patient cases. 

The digital, networked, collaborative modeling environment aims to eliminate many time-consuming steps and make the surgical procedure widely available. The digital model of the implant can be exported directly to a variety of rapid-prototyping manufacturing modalities, making &lsquo;hands on&rsquo; sculpting, molding, and casting steps unnecessary, and allowing the use of new, state-of-the-art implant materials. 

The current PARIS prototype employs the Christie Mirage 2000 DLP projector and a double mirror-fold to compactly and brightly illuminate an overhead black screen. Images projected on the black screen are reflected on a half-silvered mirror positioned over the user&rsquo;s desk. Putting his or her hands under the mirrored area, the user can see and interact with the virtual image, or the physical haptic device and/or keyboard. The configuration is well suited to the lighting conditions of a typical office environment, and the device can be easily packed, moved and deployed. The half-silvered mirror display can be raised and lowered over the desktop, so users can either work at their desk or in the virtual-reality space without leaving their offices. PARIS uses EVL-developed collaboration and networking software CAVERNsoft and Quanta, which enable real-time interactions over very-high-speed networks. 

EVL has been working in cooperation with UIC&rsquo;s Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory and Department of Neurosurgery, to develop the collaborative augmented reality environment to provide a precise method to construct and revise pre-surgical cranial implant designs. 

&ldquo;We want to take a precise procedure and allow medical professionals to consult worldwide,&rdquo; said UIC medical modeler and application collaborator Ray Evenhouse. &ldquo;The tools to model implants in a digital environment are in place. Given the right networking conditions, we could begin routinely produce implants using this method within two years.&rdquo; 

The PARIS system is on exhibit in the Fakespace Systems booth at SC&rsquo;02 in Baltimore. Fakespace commercializes the EVL-developed CAVE&reg; and ImmersaDesk&reg; systems. EVL receives major funding for PARIS development from National Science Foundation&rsquo;s Major Research Instrumentation and Research Infrastructure awards, and the Department of Energy Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) Visual Interactive Environment for Weapons Simulation (VIEWS) program. PARIS is a registered trademark of University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

PARIS&trade; Debuts at SC&rsquo;02 with Haptic Medical Demo

EVL&rsquo;s PARIS system demonstrated the possibilities for clinical rehabilitation of the human sensory-motor system at the 26th International RESNA Conference. Participants interacted with virtual objects using stereo vision and a haptic robot. The event highlighted the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) launch into the public arena only after six months of operation. 

RERC is chartered with developing an augmented reality (AR) system interfaced with a robot for training and rehabilitation purposes.

PARIS at Rehabilitation Engineering &amp; Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA)

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in cooperation with UIC&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.ahs.uic.edu/ahs/php/index.php?sitename=vrml">Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory</a> and <a href="http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcns/">Department of Neurosurgery</a>, are developing a collaborative augmented reality environment with haptic feedback to provide a precise method to construct and revise pre-surgical cranial implant designs. This process can correct traumatic head injuries and restore normal facial appearance. 

EVL&rsquo;s Personal Augmented Reality Immersive System (PARIS) presents unique challenges to software development. Integrating the display, rendering, and haptics libraries requires understanding the various capabilities of each. This presentation provides an overview of the techniques used for software development on the augmented reality system, PARIS. 

The Sensory Motor Performance Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago has recently received its second PARIS machine.

Users Manipulate a Virtual Cranial Implant on the PARIS

Programming the Personal Augmented Reality Immersive System PARIS&trade;

The Electronic Visualization Lab&rsquo;s Fall 2003 MFA AD508 Seminar Series meets every Wednesday from 2:00 - 4:00pm. The series begins with presentations of work by first and second year MFA, EVL students and concludes with a group project. This semester&rsquo;s seminar series is moderated by <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/drew/">Drew Browning</a>. 

Please check <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/seminar/index.php3">Seminar Page</a> for exact location of the weekly meeting.

MFA AD508 Seminar Series

The PARIS was demonstrated at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2003 Meeting at the McCormick Place Convention Center.

PARIS application display with medical image data at RSNA 2003

PARIS Displayed at RSNA 2003

Those who attended the exhibition of VROOM at the proceedings of Siggraph &rsquo;94, experienced the possibilities of scientific visualization in computational science and engineering with emphasis on interactive, collaborative problem-solving. Virtual environments enabled participants to view, enter and interact with massive datasets. They could become smaller than an atom or larger than the universe; stand in the middle of a thunderstorm or travel through the human bloodstream. 

Over 40 projects were exhibited during four days of demonstrations, involving more than 200 researchers. The demonstrations used CAVE and BOOM technologies, transmitted over local high-speed networks, using massive datastores, superworkstations, supercomputers, and scientific instrumentation. The primary goal of VROOM was to encourage the development of teams, tools, hardware, system software, and human interface models. New interaction paradigms for virtual environments, tuned to science and engineering emerged. 

Attendees gained a vision of the 90&rsquo;s scientific &ldquo;cyberworkspace&rdquo;. VR experiences enable researchers to interactively explore their scientific domains, play &ldquo;what if&rdquo; games by modifying their codes, and view the resulting visualizations. VR is recognized as an &ldquo;intelligent user interface&rdquo; to the emerging National Information Infrastructure, that will enable computational scientists and engineers to access HPCC enabling technologies and put the &ldquo;human in the loop&rdquo; for timely data analysis and understanding. 

Additional EVL applications are as follows (also see &lsquo;related research&rsquo; links below): 
CitySpace 
Computational Modeling for Crash-Worthiness 
Simulation of a Grinding Process 
Visualization of Casting Process 
Using VR for Machine Design 
Scientific Visualization of Gyrofluid Tokamak Turbulence 
Getting Physical in Four Dimensions 
Topological Surface Deformation 
Detour 
The Virtual Eye 
Weakly Electric Fish Electric Organ Discharge 
JASON Interactive Mapper 
Post-Euclidean Walkabout

VROOM - The Virtual Reality Room :: Exhibition at Siggraph

The <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu">MIT Media Laboratory</a> was founded by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte and the late Jerome Wiesner, who foresaw the coming convergence of computing, publishing, and broadcast, fueled by changes in the communications industry. As this convergence accelerated, it spurred interconnected developments in the unusual range of disciplines that the Laboratory brought together, including cognition, electronic music, graphic design, video, and holography, as well as work in computation and human-machine interfaces. 

Helen-Nicole Kostis presents the concept for the Media Laboratory and the visionary insights of the digital future, as they were unraveled by the director of the Laboratory, Nicholas Negroponte, in Being Digital, in 1995. Almost ten years after the book&rsquo;s publication, it is both mentally rewarding and informative to review some of the projections, their current status, and future.

inside Wiesner Building

The Media Lab - Past &amp; Future

Cristian Luciano presents the latest research in advanced medical visualization technologies and applications using the ImmersiveTouch&trade; System at the 14th annual Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Conference, Hyatt Regency Long Beach. His paper entitled, &ldquo;Second Generation Haptic Ventriculostomy Simulator Using the ImmersiveTouch System&rdquo; documents this work and will be presented as a part of the Surgical Simulation: Validation - Future Issues session at the conference.

3D isosurfaces: skin, skull, brain and ventricles

ImmersiveTouch System Research Presented at Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Conference

EVL alumni and Argonne National Laboratory staff members, Mike Papka&rsquo;s and Joe Insley&rsquo;s research efforts and collaborative work in the development of arterial simulations / visualization are featured in &ldquo;Science Grid This Week&rdquo;. 

Grid Gets the Blood Flowing 

A collaboration of mathematicians, middleware developers and visualization scientists has demonstrated the most comprehensive three-dimensional model of human arterial blood flow ever attempted. The simulation of the human arterial tree, the network of arteries throughout the human body, was completed using TeraGrid resources. 

&ldquo;We want to be able to study diseases like atherosclerosis in more detail,&rdquo; said George Karniadakis from Brown University. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the effect on the arteries in the brain if there&rsquo;s atherosclerosis, or plaque buildup, in the carotid artery? Individual arteries have been studied by many research groups, but they have to specify artificial conditions at the edges of each artery.&rdquo; With a global blood circulation model such guesses at conditions are not necessary, and scientists can see the effect of a disturbance in blood flow anywhere in the body. Such simulations may impact many areas of medical research. 

Over the past 10 years, Karniadakis and his research group developed a computer program that simulates the largest 55 arteries and 27 bifurcations, or places where an artery splits into two, in the tree. Until last year, the simulations were run on only one computing resource at a time, modeling at most two or three branching sites at once. But in early 2005, the collaboration proposed harnessing the combined power of the TeraGrid&rsquo;s many computing resources to simulate, and visualize in real time, more than a dozen branching sites? 

More <a href="http://www.interactions.org/sgtw/2006/0329/arterial_tree_more.html">www.interactions.org/sgtw/2006/0329/arterial_tree_more.html</a>

Three-Dimensional Bifurcations

Science Grid This Week Features EVL Alumni Research

Dr. Frederico Pereira Laier of the Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro <a href="http://www.ufrj.br">(UFRJ)</a> invited Jason Leigh and Paul Morin to give presentations on EVL&rsquo;s advanced visualization, collaboration and networking research to his students, the Computer Graphics Technology Group at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro <a href="http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/">(TecGraf - PUC-Rio)</a>, and members of the Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos <a href="http://www.finep.gov.br">(FINEP)</a> - which is Brazil&rsquo;s equivalent of the U.S. National Science Foundation. 

Brazil&rsquo;s first GeoWall system was also installed, in the Geology Department at the Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro.

Geology and Geography Professors Seeing Brazil&rsquo;s First GeoWall

Presentations on Advanced Visualization and Collaboration at universities in Rio De Janeiro

Thursday, October 18, 2007 
11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m. 

Andrew B. Raij will discuss the development and recent advances of the Virtual OSCE (VOSCE). The VOSCE is a virtual experience that simulates a patient-doctor interview using highly interactive virtual humans. In the VOSCE, health professions students interact with life-sized virtual humans using speech and gesture. Through this interaction, students practice and learn interpersonal communication skills. VOSCE scenarios include a variety of patients (varied ethnicity, age, and gender) expressing conditions from abdominal pain to cranial nerve damage to breast mass screening. The VOSCE system was developed jointly by a research group of medical faculty, educators, and computer scientists at the University of Florida, Medical College of Georgia, and Keele University, School of Pharmacy. 

The presentation will emphasize current work into providing realistic patient interactions, including using real tools, physiological measures, mannequin simulators, and virtual instructors. Also, this talk will cover the results of recent studies that explore racial / ethnicity biases, after-action reviews, communication skills, validity, component evaluation, and high anxiety interactions (sexual history and abnormal findings) with virtual humans. 

Biography 
Andrew B. Raij is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Department at the University of Florida. His research areas include computer graphics, computer vision, human-computer interaction and virtual reality. Raij graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. (2001) degree in Computer Science, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a MS (2003). His mentors include Drs. Benjamin Watson and Ian Horswill (B.S.), Henry Fuchs, Herman Towles, and Marc Pollefeys (M.S.), and Benjamin Lok (Ph.D.). For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.eng.usf.edu/~raij/">www.cise.ufl.edu/~raij</a>.

Medical student using

Virtual Humans for Interpersonal Interaction Education

EVL faculty Jason Leigh, Associate Professor of Computer Science and co-Director of EVL, and Daniel Sauter, Assistant Professor School of Art &amp; Design join Annette Valenta, Associate Dean for Health, Informatics anc Technology to participate in UIC&rsquo;s Fifth Brown Bag Interdisciplinary Lunch. Panelist with conduct informal presentations to engage an open group discussion with attendees focusing on visualization in arts, medicine, engineering and teaching. 

The event is sponsored by the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Research in an effort to foster a more collaborative environment for interdisciplinary research at UIC. Topics for the Brown Bag Lunches are selected by the Research Advisory Council. 

For more information about the Brown Bag Lunches, please contact Emilie Sauvee at esauvee@uic.edu.

5th Brown Bag Interdisciplinary Lunch: Visualization

EVL PhD candidate Yiwen Sun presented her research in eye-tracking for medical diagnosis of attention deficit disorders at the IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence 2009 / Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining (IEEE CIDM 2009). 

Automatic Analysis of Eye Tracking Data for Medical Diagnosis (Galgani, F., Sun, Y., Lanzi, P.L., Leigh, J.) was part of the session entitled CIDM-7: Applications to biomedicine, e-commerce, engineering, etc. III. 

Chair: Alessando Sperduti 
University of Padova, Italy 
Schedule: Tuesday, March 31, 2:00PM-4:00PM 
Room: Hermitage C

Figure of Eye Tracking Data from Experiments

IEEE CIDM 2009 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining

To read the full article and see a related video visit the <a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=130409">Medill Reports Chicago</a>. 

by Kathryn Murphy 
May 20, 2009 

Since helping to digitize the images of the Death Star for the first Stars War movie, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago has been at the front lines of computer graphics and interactive visualization technology. Maxine Brown, associate director of the lab sat down with Medill to discuss the many innovations and projects in the lab. 

Q: So, tell me a little about what you do at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory. 

A: The University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory does research and education. We specialize in the development of networked visualization and collaboration hardware and software. We&rsquo;re interested in having people collaborate with one another, plus their data, over distance. Two or more remote groups can interact with their data and with one another using advanced optical networks. 

Our middle name is visualization. The lab&rsquo;s been around for 36 years, and we&rsquo;ve always specialized in real-time, interactive computer graphics. Back in 1992, we got interested in not only developing the algorithms to make pretty pictures, but in moving these pictures, in real time, from point A to point B. So, we started getting involved in networking, which is why we today do networked visualization and collaboration today. 

Q: What do you mean, from point A to point B? 

A: When you&rsquo;re at home watching television, you want the picture to flow flawlessly from your cable provider to your television screen, and if there are hiccups, if there are jitters or if the image breaks up, you&rsquo;re not going to be satisfied. Well, we&rsquo;re looking at images and animations that are extremely high resolution, much higher than today&rsquo;s HDTV movies that you view in your home, and we are looking at ways of sending them, interactively and in real-time, flawlessly over very high-speed optical research networks. 

Q: You have a large tiled display of monitors, is that an example of where you view those extremely high-resolution images? 

A: Yes, we tile LCD displays - like you have on your laptop computers. An LCD display is approximately the resolution of HDTV, or about two megapixels. EVL&rsquo;s largest tiled display, called LambdaVision, is 55 LCDs, 11 across and five up, and equals 105 Megapixels, which is the number of little dots or picture elements - a &ldquo;pixel&rdquo; is a picture element - that are on the screen. 

The larger the screen size, the bigger the image you can show, or the more images you can show side by side. Today&rsquo;s feature films are 4,000 by 2,000 pixels, or eight megapixels in size, which is four times the resolution of HDTV. Some of the scientific images we work with are much larger.

Anatomy Class Visuals on EVL&rsquo;s Tiled Display

From pictures to pixels: interactive visualization explained

&ldquo;Redefining the Medical Artist&rdquo; - an exhibition curated by Meena Malhotra, a Master&rsquo;s student in the UIC Biomedical Visualization program - is on view at the International Museum of Surgical Science (1524 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago) through October 17, 2009. The exhibition&rsquo;s photorealistic 3-D models are created with the same software video-game designers use. Malhotra&rsquo;s master&rsquo;s thesis involves developing 3-D models and interactive animations of a dog&rsquo;s hind leg so veterinarians can learn how to perform a common surgery on dogs with hip dysplasia. Like many of her classmates, she&rsquo;s brushing up on her programming skills at UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), which pioneered several virtual-reality technologies. UIC&rsquo;s graduate biomedical visualization program is one of only four in the United States; Malhotra cites its partnership with the EVL as evidence that it&rsquo;s the most progressive. Malhotra finds that the program attracts students who are torn between art and science in college - many of them doctors&rsquo; kids, like herself, whose interest in medicine doesn&rsquo;t quite extend to medical school. 

For the full article see <a href="http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/art-design/77412/redefining-the-medical-artist">Time Out Chicago, Art &amp; Design - Medical Cool</a>.

Dendritic Spine Growth

A Unique UIC Program Unites Art and Science

EVL alumnae Helen-Nicole Kostis and Cole Krumbholz join Daria Tsoupikova, EVL Associate Professor to curate two new panels on Scientific and BioMedical Visualization for the SIGGRAPH 2009 Computer Animation Festival. These panels showcased exciting recent visualization works in both 2D and 3D Stereoscopic formats to capture interesting or under-represented areas in Visualization, and to contribute to the definition of the standards for technical development and production methods. 

Tomorrow&rsquo;s Yesterday: Scientific and BioMedical Visualization 
Wednesday, 5 August, 2009 
<a href="http://www.siggraph.org/s2009/sessions/panels/details/?type=panel&amp;id=137">S2009 Panel Description</a> 
Screenings of state-of-the art scientific and biomedical visualizations followed by discussions of innovative solutions, behind-the-scenes software developments, interdisciplinary collaboration, methods, techniques, and production pipelines. The goal of this panel is to present fresh work, capture interesting and under-represented visualization areas in the SIGGRAPH community, and contribute to definition of standards for technical development and production methods. The panel provides a balanced platform for exploration of the overlapping technical problems and complex solutions in scientific and biomedical visualizations knowledge. 

Moderator: Donna Cox; NCSA, University of Illinois 
Panelists: Greg Shirah; NASA / GSFC - Scientific Visualization Studio 
Doug Roberts; Adler Planetarium &amp; Astronomy Museum 
Seth W. Ruffins; California Institute of Technology 
Ga&euml;l McGill; Harvard Medical School &amp; Digizyme, Inc. 

A Journey from Outer to Inner Space: Scientific and BioMedical Stereoscopic Visualization 
Thursday, 6 August, 2009 
<a href="http://www.siggraph.org/s2009/sessions/panels/details/?type=panel&amp;id=140">S2009 Panel Description</a> 
This panel begins with a special screening: earth and lunar sciences, solar expeditions, galaxy formations, climate studies, mummy returns, and a journey inside the human body - all screened using state-of-the-art stereoscopic Real-D Theater projection! Panelists discuss the challenges, techniques, and software involved in producing stereoscopic scientific and biomedical visualizations. 

Moderator: Mark Bolas; Institute for Creative Technologies &amp; School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California 
Panelists: Helen-Nicole Kostis; University of Maryland Baltimore County &amp; Scientific Visualization Studio, NASA / GSFC 
Arnaud Thernisien; Universities Space Research Association 
Donna Cox; NCSA, University of Illinois 
Robert Patterson; Advanced Visualization Lab, NCSA 
Benjamin Moreno; SARL IMA Solutions 
Richard Breiman; University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine

S2009 Panel Session

Scientific and BioMedical Visualization panels for the Computer Animation Festival at the SIGGRAPH 2009

<a href="http://www.clinicalrobotics.com">The Clinical Robotic Surgery Association (CRSA)</a> will hold its first meeting October 9-10, 2009, just prior to the 95th annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons&rsquo; Clinical Congress, at the at Swissotel Chicago. A major live-transmission demonstration is being organized by the Division of Minimally Invasive, General &amp; Robotic Surgery in the Surgery Department of the UIC College of Medicine and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) in the Computer Science Department of the UIC College of Engineering. The goal is to showcase how visualization and networking technologies can advance research and education among remote robotic surgery sites. 

Using video-teleconferencing systems provided, in part, by Cisco Systems, at least four different sites will be able to see and assist with two simultaneous robotic surgeries: an operator will switch between two operations taking place in separate rooms at the University of Illinois Hospital, with only one being dynamically broadcast at a time; a remote expert at EVL will be able to observe the operations and make comments while retrieving and examining relevant medical images; and, CRSA attendees will be able to observe first-hand the surgical techniques and skills required. In the future, advanced networks and large-scale visualization displays will enable experts to virtually consult on operations while quickly retrieving patient records and high-resolution medical imagery, regardless of where the information is stored, and will enable students to watch and learn by being virtually inside the operating room during procedures.

Visualization Wall for OR of the Future

Advancing Robotic Surgery Using High-Performance Visualization and Networking Technologies

October 30, 2009 - Teaching doctors about eye diseases using stereoscopic computer-graphics imaging was well received at this week&rsquo;s <a href="http://aao.org">American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) annual conference</a>, held in San Francisco. UIC&rsquo;s Department of Pharmacy Practice (PHARM) and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) developed a well-attended instruction course entitled &ldquo;Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) and Mimicking Macular Lesions - A Unique Stereoscopic Adventure.&rdquo; Using a commercially available passive-stereo 3D display, the audience was able to examine 3D images of the fundus of AMD patients and compare and contrast them with people with mimicking lesions, thereby learning how to more accurately diagnose AMD and distinguish it from other diseases. PHARM&rsquo;s Rick Fiscella and EVL&rsquo;s Luc Renambot developed the applications and designed the course using images from doctors at UIC, UCLA, Cornell, University of Florida, and University of Hong Kong.

Teaching Doctors Using Stereoscopic Imaging at AAO 2009

A networked demonstration of the collaborative project Virtual Reality Environment Assisting Recovery from Stroke premiered at the SIGGRAPH ASIA 2009 on December 19th, 2009 in Yokohama, Japan. UIC / EVL associate professor and technologist Daria Tsoupikova, Nikolay Stoykov (RIC) and Randy Vick (SAIC) presented the pre-clinical phase of an ongoing research project that uses a pneumatic glove, head and arm tracking, and a head-mounted display to assist hand rehabilitation for stroke patients. 

The virtual reality environment was inspired by the story of Alice in Wonderland. The virtual host / therapist (March Hare) directs the guest / patient to perform tasks requiring repetitive grasp-and-release and individuated finger movements in the course of interacting with the numerous animated objects in the scene. The lecture outlined the research goals of this ongoing project and the interactive networked real-time demonstration highlighted the recent state of research. SIGGRAPH Asia
is among the top peer reviewed exhibition and presentation venues in Computer Graphics, Digital Arts and Interactive Techniques - an international festival of art, animation, and innovative technologies.

Virtual Reality Environment Assisting Recovery from Stroke

by Thomas Forrest, Medill Reports - Chicago, Northwestern University 

MARCH 9, 2010 - You&rsquo;re in the far depths of space and turn your head to see you&rsquo;re rapidly approaching Mars. You glide over the rocky surface with the glaring light of stars in the background. Each head movement manipulates the world around you as you tour the outer limits of space from within your home. You can get this 3-D view of Mars right here in Chicago, and you can do it without the often mocked 3-D glasses. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory are working to deliver a glasses free 3-D to the public&hellip; 

To view the entire article, see: <a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=160769">news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=160769</a>

Glasses-free 3D

CBS Chicago evening news recently profiled UIC&rsquo;s Biomedical Visualization (BVis) program, part of the College of Applied Health Sciences and a national leader in educating medical artists. BVis program head Scott Barrows is interviewed and talks about 3D medical applications - whether displayed on an iPad or on the stereoscopic GeoWall (shown behind him) - for patient care. 

EVL&rsquo;s longstanding ties to the BVis program were prominently displayed in the news story. BVis employs EVL&rsquo;s hardware technologies, such as the GeoWall 3D passive stereo display, and has previously hired EVL students to help create content, such as the eye image shown on the GeoWall. Most recently, EVL&rsquo;s Luc Renambot, an Assistant Research Professor in Computer Science, works regularly with BVis students and corporate partners to create and port medical content to innovative stereo displays, such as the GeoWall and EVL&rsquo;s new OmegaDesk. 

Barrows says that his students &ldquo;&hellip;have to have the knowledge of a doctor, the talent of an artist, and the ability of a computer scientist.&rdquo; &ldquo;Slip on a pair of glasses,&rdquo; says the commentator, &ldquo;and the wonders of these innovations take doctors into the 3D world of a virtual operating room. &hellip;It&rsquo;s like I can reach out and touch it.&rdquo; 

<a href="http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=70335@wbbm.dayport.com">View the CBS Chicago news story</a> 

BVis and EVL previously got publicity in the 2009 &ldquo;TimeOut Chicago&rdquo; article about the art exhibition &ldquo;Redefining the Medical Artist,&rdquo; curated by BVis graduate student Meena Malhotra. She cited BVis&rsquo; partnership with EVL as evidence that UIC&rsquo;s graduate biomedical visualization program is one of most progressive in the country. 

<a href="http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/art-design/77412/redefining-the-medical-artist">Timeout Chicago Article</a>

Scott Barrows in front of GeoWall

CBS news profiles UIC&rsquo;s BVis (and EVL technologies)

Open Surgery Training Simulator Using Haptics and Augmented Reality Technologies 

This thesis focuses on the R&amp;D of a novel Haptics-based Augmented Reality system that is able to realistically simulate open surgical procedures, called ImmersiveTouch&reg;. 

As a proof of concept, a neurosurgical procedure called ventriculostomy is simulated. This surgical procedure consists of the insertion of a catheter in the brain ventricles for draining excess spinal fluid and reducing intracranial pressure. While performing the surgery, neurosurgeons must rely on their fine eye-hand coordination and sense of touch to properly orient and introduce the catheter, as a subtle puncturing sensation is felt when the catheter cannulates the ventricles. 

The new high-fidelity simulator can help trainees to develop both tactile and psychomotor skills required to perform a ventriculostomy. As an interdisciplinary project between the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Department of Neurosurgery at UIC, the ultimate goal of this doctoral dissertation is to provide an interactive educational instrument to better train medical residents, allowing them to become proficient prior to working with real patients, unrestricted by time and patient safety constraints. 

Industrial Virtual Reality Institute, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Dissertation Announcement

PhD Dissertation: Open Surgery Training Simulator

The article Medicine&rsquo;s Next Frontier by Sandra Guy appeared in the June 26, 2010 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times. It reports on a major new grant from the National Science Foundation to the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) to build the Next-Generation CAVE (NG-CAVE). The first generation CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment), also developed by EVL and introduced in 1992, was a room-sized virtual-reality theater where images were rear-projected onto 3 walls and downward projected onto the floor. 

The new design will take advantage of today&rsquo;s full-high-definition flat panels, making the NG-CAVE significantly cheaper, brighter, and easier to maintain than the original CAVE. The NG-CAVE will deliver better color, more graphics and text, and achieve a human&rsquo;s 20/20 vision quality. It will be configurable as either a 3-D display (requiring lightweight stereo glasses) or a 2-D wall, and will be used both locally by small or large groups and remotely by groups around the world to simultaneously share high-resolution images while collaborating with one another. 

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The above article is based on the article <a href="http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/newsbureau/cgi-bin/index.cgi?from=Releases&amp;to=Release&amp;id=2899&amp;fromhome=1">Fantastic Journey to UIC&rsquo;s New CAVE</a> by Paul Francuch that appeared in the May 18, 2010 issue of UIC NEWS. The article&rsquo;s reference to medicine is based on <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&amp;type=4&amp;indi=670">ongoing trials</a> that EVL is doing with the Division of Minimally Invasive, General &amp; Robotic Surgery in the Surgery Department of the UIC College of Medicine.

Simulation of EVL&rsquo;s NG-CAVE

Medicine&rsquo;s Next Frontier

Cristian Javier Luciano&rsquo;s doctoral dissertation &ldquo;Open Surgery Training Simulator Using Haptics and Augmented Reality Technologies&rdquo; has been nominated by the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering for the Annual Graduate College Outstanding Thesis Award for 2010. Awards are made in only four divisional categories: 
<ul>
<li>Behavioral and Social Science</li>
<li>Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences</li>
<li>Fine Arts and Humanities</li>
<li>Life Sciences</li>
</ul> 

Awards to be announced December 3, 2010.

Luciano Doctoral Dissertation Abstract

C. J. Luciano

C. J. Luciano Dissertation Nominated for the Graduate College Outstanding Thesis Award 2010

Are you interested in learning a cool 3D-touch technology? 

EVL collaborator, Research Assistant Professor Cristian Luciano (MIE) introduces UIC&rsquo;s first hands-on course on haptics (or the sense of touch) and augmented reality. You&rsquo;ll learn how to successfully combine high-level 3D graphics, haptics, collision detection and physics-based dynamic simulation for a more realistic interactive experience. You&rsquo;ll be able to easily develop virtual reality applications to visualize and feel holographic-like virtual objects for engineering, medical, dental and scientific simulation and training. 

Multiple SensAble Technologies&rsquo; Omni haptic devices and PC workstations will be available for the students to develop the projects. 

Time: MW, 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM 
Place: 3290 SEL 
Pre-requisites: None 
Recommended for: Grads and undergrads 

Also, see: 
<a href="http://www.mie.uic.edu/MIE/WebHome">Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department News</a> 
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chicago-IL/UIC-College-of-Engineering/282582792165">UIC College of Engineering on Facebook</a> 
<a href="http://twitter.com/UICEngineering">twitter UIC Engineering</a>

ImmersiveTouch&trade; Augmented Reality Simulator

IE 494: Haptics &amp; Augmented Reality

When we move our body or make a reaching arm movement, it is essential to know where our body is in space with respect to the target or, conversely, where the target is relative to the body. But how do we know that? While our movements happen in the physical world, the planning and control of movement involves internal representations of the body and external space. These representations are formed by multiple networked regions of the brain using information provided by sensors of different modalities. Vision is the major source of information about the external space, while sensors inside the muscles provide a sense of position and movement of the body parts, or proprioception. Finally, one can think of neural commands to muscles as elements of the internal motor space. Thus, planning and control of movement involves multiple levels of processing and transformations both within and between the space representations, e.g., visual-proprioceptive, visual-motor, and proprioceptive-motor. I will review some of the current views of these representations, in particular body schema and body image, and will discuss possible involvement of the subcortical structures, in particular the basal ganglia, in construction of the body schema. I will focus on the effect of Parkinson&rsquo;s disease, which affects information processing in the basal ganglia, on planning and control of voluntary movement, and discuss possible ways to use virtual reality to improve internal representations of the body and space in movement disorders.

Mark B. Shapiro, PhD

Body in space inside the Mind - Multiple representations of the body and space in the brain

EVL associate professor Andrew Johnson participated in the plenary session at the Southeast Asia International Joint Research Training Program in High-Performance Computing Applications and Networking Technology event Taichung, Taiwan presenting &ldquo;Future Me - Human Augmentics for Sustained Wellbeing.&rdquo;

Human Augmentics Presentation

Human Augmentics

Future Me - Human Augmentics for Sustained Wellbeing Sustained Wellbeing

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: Two Northwestern University Medill School journalism students spent a week at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) for their practicum experience, writing articles that highlight some of EVL&rsquo;s accomplishments. 

In the following article, they profile EVL&rsquo;s Daria Tsoupikova, an associate professor in the UIC School of Art and Design. Tsoupikova, in collaboration with biomedical engineers, computer scientists, electrical engineers and occupational therapists, has been developing a virtual-reality environment to assist stroke patients with hand rehabilitation. Tsoupikova recently received a Fulbright Scholarship and spent four months at the Arts et M&eacute;tiers Paris Tech in France where she worked testing software for an online home therapy system. Now home, she and her colleagues in Chicago will continue to pursue this avenue of research. 

In addition to the article, the sidebar contains two excellent overviews of EVL, profiling faculty, students and staff and more of the Lab&rsquo;s virtual-reality and health-related research projects. 

Innovative virtual reality technology revolutionizes stroke therapy 
by Rian Ervin and Thomas Owen, Medill Reports Chicago 

March 01, 2012 

Playing 3-D games in a fantasy virtual reality environment such as Alice in Wonderland is a new avenue for rehabilitation and it sure beats monotonous sessions of moving objects from one box to another to repair motor skills. &ldquo;Virtual reality therapy is so popular right now because patients get bored,&rdquo; said artist Daria Tsoupikova, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s School of Art and Design. With virtual reality, patients get excited. &ldquo;They can see something colorful, they can see some kind of environment, other characters, and have a story behind the therapy,&rdquo; she said. 

Advances in stroke therapy are rapidly evolving with virtual reality techniques. Tsoupikova, along with Dr. Nikolay Stoykov, a biomedical engineer, Randy Vick, an art therapist, Yu Li, an art research assistant and a group of occupational therapists and engineers from the Hand Recovery Laboratory at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, collaborated to develop a virtual reality environment to assist stroke patients with hand rehabilitation. 

RIC began with a project utilizing a specially calibrated glove that patients wear in conjunction with a virtual reality environment. In this virtual world, the patient is guided through a series of therapeutic hand movements. Now, Tsoupikova is working with computer scientists at the UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory and RIC physicians to further develop the glove technology. 

<a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=201800">Read the complete story</a>

The Mad Hatter&rsquo;s Tea Party virtual environment is a creation for stroke therapy, using virtual animation software and 3D models.

Innovative virtual reality technology revolutionizes stroke therapy

Tom Marrinan, a student of UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), in collaboration with student Ian Gould of the UIC Bioengineering Laboratory for Product and Process Design, received 1st Place in campus&rsquo; 2012 Image of Research competition. Winning entries from this annual interdisciplinary event showcase the breadth and diversity of research at UIC. 

Winning entries are on exhibit in the lobby of the Daley Library from April 19 - May 31, in the Library of Health Sciences, and featured on light pole banners around campus. Winners, finalists and a wide selection of other entries are also posted to an <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000645">online gallery in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI)</a>. 

Marrinan and Gould&rsquo;s image is the result of collaboration between a computer science student specializing in scientific visualization and a bioengineering student with research interests in cerebral blood flow, and depicts the complex architecture of the cerebral vascular network. 

This is the 3rd time EVL has received 1st Place in the five years of the annual Image of Research competition, as well as recognition in several other select categories. Here is a summary of all EVL accomplishments: 

<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1001057">2012: 1st Place</a> - &ldquo;Artificially created cortical functional blood unit,&rdquo; Thomas Marrinan, Ian Gould 

<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000955">2011: Honorable Mention</a> - &ldquo;20 Foot Canvas,&rdquo; JD Pirtle, Arthur Nishimoto, Karan Chakrapani, Todd Silvia, and Philip Pilosi; <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000964">Finalist</a> - &ldquo;Cli-Mate,&rdquo; Ed Kahler 

<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000842">2010: 1st Place</a> - &ldquo;Avatar - A Virtual Human,&rdquo; Sangyoon Lee 

<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000745">2009: Honorable Mention</a> - &ldquo;The Viewer,&rdquo; Julio Obelleiro; <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000755">Finalist</a> - &ldquo;The Tight Room,&rdquo; Heejoo Kim 

<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000640">2008: 1st Place</a> - &ldquo;Infinity Gliders,&rdquo; AnnMarie Cernoch; <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000649">3rd Place</a> - &ldquo;Rain on Mars,&rdquo; Dmitri Svistula

Artificially created cortical functional blood unit by Tom Marrinan and Ian Gould wins 1st Place in 2012 UIC Image of Research Competition.

EVL Student Receives 1st Place in 2012 UIC Image of Research Competition

Several weeks ago information about an excellent article profiling EVL&rsquo;s Daria Tsoupikova, associate professor in the UIC School of Art and Design, who is part of a team developing virtual-reality-based therapies for stroke patient rehabilitation. 

This week, the National Stroke Association posted both the article and an accompanying videotape of Tsoupikova&rsquo;s work with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) on its <a href="http://www.facebook.com/NationalStrokeAssociation">Facebook page</a>. One person commented, &ldquo;My care team has encouraged my online video game habit; calling it therapeutic.&rdquo; 

In addition, the RIC Machines Assisting Recovery from Stroke - Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (MARS-RERC) posted the article and video on its website. 

<a href="http://www.ric.org/research/centers/mars2/mars2.aspx">Article in NEWS IN 2012</a> 
<a href="http://www.ric.org/research/centers/mars2/d2vid.aspx">MARS-RERC Video</a> 

This project is now starting clinical trials, so more exciting developments are on the horizon.

RIC patient using robot in rehabilitation therapy after hemispheric stroke

Spring 2012 semester, professors Jason Leigh and Robert Kenyon teach the first Human Augmentics class. Human Augmentics is a term coined by Leigh and Kenyon to refer to technologies for enhancing the capabilities of humans. The belief is that by developing technologies that enhances the capabilities of all humans, the economies of scale will make it possible to bring down the cost of rehabilitation technologies, which are currently niche and therefore expensive. 

In the class faculty and researchers in Computer Science, BioEngineering, Psychology, Communication, and Art &amp; Design from UIC, Northwestern&rsquo;s Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and Rush Medical Center gave presentations on topics that ranged from wearable technologies, brain-computer interfaces, to the ethics of a future augmented humanity. Students also presented research papers from relevant conferences and developed projects to prototype Human Augmentics concepts. 

One of the projects was NinjaVision, a system of modular ultrasound-to-tactile transducers that can be worn on a body to enable the blind to more effortlessly navigate a room. NinjaVision can also be used for bike riders in the city to enable them to sense cars that are moving around them. Another project involved the development of an electronic asthma medication doser that can transmit dose information to a mobile phone to enable clinicians to provide adolescents with better asthma care. Lastly, the Audio Dilation project prototyped a wearable earpiece that intentionally slows down audio from speech for applications such as: enabling a cognitively or hearing-impaired listener to improve comprehension of speech; aiding the understanding of foreign language dialog; or lowering the cognitive load of phone conversations during driving. 

<a href="http://humanaugmentics.org">Learn more about Human Augmentics and/or the class lectures</a>

Human Augmentics Devices

Professors Jason Leigh and Robert Kenyon teach the first Human Augmentics class

<a href="http://researchmap.jp/hiroida/?lang=english">Dr. Hirofumi Ida</a>, Research Associate, Department of Physical Therapy, University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Fellow, Department of Human System Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology presents his research in virtual-reality for health and sports science at EVL&rsquo;s weekly tech meeeting, Wednesday, May 30th, 11AM. 

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT 

Computer-simulated visual display, such as computer graphics (CG) animations and virtual environments (VE), are increasingly being used for the assessment of perceptual motor skills in sports, rehabilitation and physical therapy. I will talk about the results of our previous studies and future perspectives of on-going experiments. 
<ol>
<li>Virtual ball catching in CAVE</li>
<li>Sense of presence for tennis ball flight in CAVE</li>
<li>Collision avoidance in head mount display</li>
</ol>

Dr. Hirofumi Ida

Hirofumi Ida, Virtual-reality in health and sports science

EVL PhD candidate Thomas Marrinan presents Whole-Brain Vascular Reconstruction, Simulation, and Visualization at VisWeek 2012 in Seattle, Washington, October 14-19, 2012. The poster was awarded an Honorable Mention. 

Authored by Thomas Marrinan, Ian Gould, Chih-Yang Hsu and Andreas Linninger from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the poster presents a pipeline for processing medical data and executing computational simulations to enhance the information conveyed in standard medical imaging. The work focuses on the whole brain, where tools have been developed that allow vasculature to be analyzed in three-dimensions, at high resolutions, and with multiple relevant data sets overlaid on the vascular structure. In order to avoid confusion and misinterpretations, the application has the ability to render simulated data such that it mirrors raw medical images and vascular reconstructions.

Brain Vascular Reconstruction, Simulation, and Visualization Poster

Centerlines can be extracted directly from images since they exist on local ridges, defined by image color intensities.

VisWeek 2012

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: In Fall 2011, the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory received a pilot grant for &ldquo;Human Augmentics for Sustained Wellbeing&rdquo; from the UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), award CCTS-0512-07. The award, to computer science professors Jason Leigh and Robert Kenyon, communications professor Steve Jones, and psychology professor Stellan Ohlsson, in partnership with Giselle Mosnaim of Rush University Medical Center, focuses on the proper use of daily asthma controller medications in urban high-risk adolescents. More generally, the pilot study illustrates how the availability of a compelling &ldquo;health dashboard&rdquo; smartphone application may inform and persuade individuals to lead healthier lifestyles. 

This project is now the subject of a recent news article. Excerpts appear below. <a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=210778">Read the entire article</a> 

Treating asthma? There&rsquo;s an app for that 
by Mitch Smith, Medill Reports Chicago 
November 14, 2012 

Sure, teens would rather play basketball or check their cell phones than even think about their asthma medicine. 

But researchers hope a new sports-themed cell phone app will encourage asthmatic kids to use their inhalers and allow doctors to more closely monitor their patients. 

Rush University Medical Center plans to begin testing the app this winter, making it available free to 10 pre-selected African Americans ages 11 to 16 from the Chicago area. 

Black children have higher rates of asthma than their white counterparts, said Dr. Giselle Mosnaim, a Rush University researcher leading the app user study. African American kids with asthma are also less likely to take their medicine and more likely to visit the emergency room than their white peers, Mosnaim said. 

But Mosnaim said she believes those risks can be reduced by interceding during an asthma patient&rsquo;s formative years. 

&ldquo;Adolescence is the time when people develop lifelong health habits,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you can intervene in adolescence, then hopefully you can make a change that can last them through the rest of your life. I can&rsquo;t change whether you have asthma or not, but I can change the outcome.&rdquo; 

Here&rsquo;s how it works: When youths in the study use their inhalers, the time of their dose is relayed to a cell phone app being designed by graduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. 

That app allows the kids to track their own progress and lets doctors see, in real-time, when patients are using their inhalers and how much of a dose they&rsquo;re taking. It gives the patients a reminder if they&rsquo;re due for another puff. 

The app is also designed to be fun. It allows boys and girls to create an avatar - with customizable faces, mustaches, glasses and other features - and shoot a virtual basketball each time they use an inhaler. 

&ldquo;The idea is to show them something and to make the app represent their progress,&rdquo; said Brent Grossman, a UIC master&rsquo;s student working on the project. 

&ldquo;The goal is, at the end, they get so used to taking their doses that they don&rsquo;t need the game,&rdquo; Kenyon said. 

Learn more about UIC&rsquo;s focus in <a href="http://www.augmentics.org">Human Augmentics</a>. 

Learn more about the <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/spiff/class/cs594/">Human Augmentics class</a> held Spring 2012. 

Read a news article about the class, titled <a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=200322">&ldquo;Chicago virtual reality lab home to futuristic health class&rdquo;</a>. 

Learn about our funded pilot study, click on the following link and scroll down to <a href="http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/CCTS/about/pilotgrantfundedfall-2011.shtml">&ldquo;Human Augmentics for Sustained Wellness&rdquo;</a>.

With a prototype of an inhaler holder in the foreground, Brent Grossman works on a cell phone app to help asthmatic teens.

Treating asthma? There&rsquo;s an app for that

UIC&rsquo;s new CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment is only two months old, and is already helping UIC neurosurgeons and bioengineering researchers make discoveries! 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has written an article describing how UIC College of Medicine neurosurgeons are working with UIC Bioengineering&rsquo;s Laboratory for Product and Process Design (LPPD), directed by Andreas Linninger, on a project to measure and model blood flow in the brains of patients with strokes, and how the CAVE2&trade; System, developed by the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), lets them see things they hadn&rsquo;t been able to see before. 

The neurosurgeons and bioengineers use patient-specific images, interpreted by computer algorithms, to represent the brain and its blood flow in 3D. Working with EVL PhD student Thomas Marrinan, they have pieced together arteries, veins and micro-vessels to create 3D, full-brain models that physiologically mirror patients&rsquo; brains. But, because of the limited image spatial resolution of today&rsquo;s laptop and desktop computers, there was something the neurosurgeons couldn&rsquo;t see in one particular patient whose cerebrovascular system they were trying to accurately model. Within five minutes of putting the model into EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; System, the chief endovascologist saw that they had connected certain arteries in a way that was inconsistent with anatomy. With that revelation, their model could be corrected. 
 
Read the article, <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126209&amp;WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&amp;WT.mc_ev=click">&ldquo;State-of-the-Art Virtual Reality System Is Key to Medical Discovery&rdquo;</a>. 

Also see, <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsmedia/cave2/index.html">NSF&rsquo;s image gallery showcasing several CAVE2&trade; System applications</a>. 

In the short term, <a href="http://www.nsf.gov">NSF features this story</a> (and a few others) on its home page. 

View the <a href="http://news.science360.gov/archives/20121214">&ldquo;NSF Science Now&rdquo; weekly video-zine</a>, that covers the CAVE2&trade; System - the fourth story mentioned (fast forward to 2 minutes 29 seconds). 

One last note&hellip; In April 2012, UIC EVL student Thomas Marrinan and UIC LPPD student Ian Gould received <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1001057">1st place in 2012 UIC Image of Research competition</a> for an image showing the complex architecture of the cerebral vascular network. It is this research that is now visible in virtual reality.

Architecture of the cerebral vascular network shown in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2.

State-of-the-Art Virtual Reality System Is Key to Medical Discovery

EVL PhD candidate Alessandro Febretti discusses the CAVE2&trade; instrumentation research and developed at the annual IS&amp;T / SPIE Electronic Imaging Science and Technology 2013 Conference. In conjunction with topics included in the Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 2013, program track: 3D Imaging, Interaction, and Metrology, &ldquo;CAVE2: a hybrid reality environment for immersive simulation and information analysis&rdquo; (Paper 8649-2) will be presented Monday February 4, 2013, 9:50 AM - 10:10 AM. 

Session 1: Welcome to Future Tech 3000 will open this program track at the <a href="Http://sanfranciscoairport.regency.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html">Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel</a>, Harbour Room A. 

Program committee members include EVL alumni Margaret Dolinsky (Indiana University) and Todd Margolis (University of California, San Diego) 

<a href="http://spie.org/app/program/index.cfm?fuseaction=conferencedetail&amp;export_id=x16280&amp;ID=x16223&amp;redir=x16223.xml&amp;conference_id=997512&amp;event_id=996859&amp;pro">SPIE 2013 Program Listing</a>

SPIE 2013 CAVE2 Paper

CAVE2 can run in Hybrid mode, to juxtapose high-resolution 2D and 3D datasets side-by-side.

SPIE 2013, The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality

The CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment, developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), is a featured story in the current issue of the CDW magazine, EDTECH: FOCUS ON HIGHER EDUCATION. The article reviews the technology used to build the CAVE2&trade; system, and how today&rsquo;s tiled LCD display walls are a major improvement over the projection technology used to build the original CAVE&trade; twenty years ago. 

&ldquo;In the 1990s, the only technology available to us was projectors, and they had all these limitations,&rdquo; [Jason Leigh, UIC computer science professor and EVL director] says. &ldquo;They were dim, expensive, hard to calibrate, and the color was frequently off. But we understood early on that things like CAVEs&trade; and tiled display walls were the new lenses through which scientists were going to look at their data. If they were going to spend millions of dollars on instruments for generating or collecting all their data, it made sense to us that they&rsquo;d want something that gives them the best look at their data. Why look at it with a poor display?&rdquo; 

In 2002, EVL began prototyping tiled, flat-panel LCD screen walls. Early LCD screens were expensive and surrounded by thick frames, or bezels. When arranged together to make up a bigger screen, unsightly gaps created distortions in the picture. They also did not project in stereoscopic 3D. But the researchers at EVL believed - correctly - that display manufacturers would address such limitations over time, making LCDs well suited to CAVE&trade; designs. 

Launched in October 2012, CAVE2&trade; is a circular room - 24 feet in diameter, roughly 7 feet high - comprising 18 columns of four 46-inch LCD screens. CAVE2&trade; was built in the same space as UIC&rsquo;s original CAVE&trade;, but the new incarnation offers much more room to move around. &ldquo;The quality of the graphics is so much better,&rdquo; says Andy Johnson, UIC associate professor of computer science and a collaborator on CAVE&trade;, who says that he was drawn to the EVL years ago by the original CAVE&trade; design. &ldquo;The contrast is better, the color is better, the number of pixels is incredible. Moving around the space feels more natural. It&rsquo;s a much better collaborative experience than it was before.&rdquo; 

<a href="http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2013/01/university-illinois-chicago-virtual-realitys-cave-pioneer">Read the entire article</a>

Andy Johnson (CS assoc. prof.) and  Jason Leigh (CS prof. &amp; EVL director) at the entrance to the CAVE2&trade; System.

University of Illinois at Chicago: Virtual Reality&rsquo;s CAVE&trade; Pioneer

Today the Associated Press issued the following article, photographs and video about the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; System, which is appearing in a variety of media outlets worldwide. 

Read the Associated Press article: <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/future-science-using-3d-worlds-visualize-data">Future science: Using 3D worlds to visualize data</a> 

Review the <a href="http://www.apimages.com/Search.aspx?st=k&amp;remem=x&amp;entity=&amp;kw=cave2&amp;intv=None&amp;shgroup=-10&amp;sh=10">photographs in the article</a> and a short video - <a href="http://youtu.be/aetwWTER4hE">First Person: a Big 3D Experience for Scientists</a>. 

In addition, link to a longer video <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-video/9882646/Star-Trek-style-holodeck-becomes-reality-as-scientists-invent-3D-vitual-reality-system.html">Star Trek-style holodeck becomes reality as scientists invent 3D virtual reality system</a>. 

DISCOVERY CANADA&rsquo;s &ldquo;Daily Planet&rdquo; show, which has a digital technology segment called &ldquo;Digit@l&rdquo; produced and hosted by Lucas Cochran, picked up the Associated Press news and did their own <a href="http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/#clip869617">coverage of the CAVE2&trade; System</a>, which aired the evening of February 20, 2013; UIC appears about 1:24 minutes into the episode.

EVL Director Jason Leigh wearing CAVE2&trade; 3D tracked glasses.

Associated Press releases print and video stories about UIC / EVL CAVE2&trade; System

EVL associate professor, Daria Tsoupikova presents her collaborative research at the 2013 NextMed NMVR20 Conference in San Diego, CA. Tsoupikova&rsquo;s presentation describes a Virtual Reality (VR) system designed for hand rehabilitation therapy following stroke. The system, developed by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, art therapists, occupational therapists, and VR artist was designed to improve patient&rsquo;s motivation and engagement during post stroke rehabilitation. The presentation describes system design, development, and user testing for efficiency, subject&rsquo;s satisfaction and clinical feasibility. Initial results are outlined. Early user study results demonstrate the system is operational and can facilitate therapy for post stroke patients with upper extremity impairment. 

The &ldquo;Medicine Meets Virtual Reality&rdquo; conference, NextMed / MMVR has served as a forum for researchers harnessing IT advances for the benefit of patient diagnosis and care, medical education, and procedural training since 1992. Over the years, its curriculum expanded well beyond virtual reality. The conference now presents a wide spectrum of innovation and examines emerging technologies - and envision future directions for the field.

Virtual Reality Environment Assisting Post Stroke Hand Rehabilitation

Virtual reality scene: tea party at the March Hare&rsquo;s cottage used in the rehab therapy application.

NextMed MMVR20 Conference

Matt O&rsquo;Connor 
&ldquo;We love science fiction, and we just want to live in the science fiction world,&rdquo; said computer scientist Jason Leigh. 

And inside the Electronic Visualization Lab&rsquo;s CAVE2, anyone can enter a virtual world. 

The EVL&rsquo;s virtual reality environment in the College of Engineering lets people navigate through the human brain or roam through the holodeck of the Star Trek Enterprise with the help of 3D glasses. 

This imposing virtual world stands 8 feet tall and 24 feet in diameter. The environment wraps 320 degrees around the user, offering a dream-like sense of infinite space that is never physically there. The system rivals 20/20 vision, consisting of 72 near-seamless passive stereo off-axis optimized 3D LCD panels that display information at 37 megapixels in 3D, or 74 megapixels in 2D. 

Students and employees toured the space at an open house Feb. 20. More open houses are set from 3 to 6 p.m. April 3 and 24 in the Engineering Research Facility. Space is limited; <a href="http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dF83YWtBSFlJZjFXb21wVFBzLUUzZ1E6MQ">register online</a> 

<a href="http://news.uic.edu/step-into-a-virtual-world">Read the entire UIC News article</a>

Thomas Marrinan, EVL research assistant and computer science Ph.D. candidate, guides a tour at a recent open house.

Step into a Virtual World (UIC News)

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) licensed the CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment to Mechdyne Corporation. Mechdyne released the following press release yesterday. 
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.mechdyne.com/cave2-images.aspx">High-resolution photos for the media</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.mechdyne.com/cave2.aspx">Information about Mechdyne&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; product</a></li>
<li>Technology enhances learning experiences, research opportunities and collaboration</li>
<li>Advanced visualization system is &ldquo;lens&rdquo; that brings big data into focus</li>
</ul> 

Marshalltown, Iowa - March 5, 2013 - Mechdyne Corporation announced that it has licensed the CAVE2&trade; hybrid reality environment developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois at Chicago. The licensing agreement was signed in January of 2013, and continues the strong working relationship that began in 1994 when Mechdyne licensed the EVL-designed original CAVE&trade; technology. 

The term CAVE&trade; is an acronym for CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment and also a reference to &ldquo;The Simile of the Cave&rdquo; in Plato&rsquo;s Republic, in which the philosopher explored the concepts of perception, reality and illusion. 

The CAVE2&trade; system provides a near-seamless, 320 degree, panoramic 2D / 3D environment that supports information-rich analysis with stunning immersive visuals. &ldquo;Although the CAVE2&trade; advanced virtual reality technology is a next generation system, many of the legacy CAVE&trade; applications can be integrated into the CAVE2&trade; system,&rdquo; said Kurt Hoffmeister, VP of Engineering and Product Development for Mechdyne. 

&ldquo;With Mechdyne as an integrator of the CAVE2&trade; design, we can point our collaborators who are interested in incorporating the CAVE2&trade; technology to Mechdyne,&rdquo; said Jason Leigh, Ph.D., Director of the EVL and Professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Chicago. &ldquo;This enables our colleagues to receive a top notch product with full technical support from Mechdyne,&rdquo; Leigh explained. 

According to Hoffmeister, &ldquo;One of the biggest benefits offered by the CAVE2&trade; system is its versatility. The system can be integrated to provide the resolution and clarity that matches human visual acuity, for an entirely new level of immersive and collaborative experience.&rdquo; 

A key feature of the CAVE2&trade; design is the use of 3D capable LCD flat panel screens rather than rear projection, which enables more efficient use of facility space, compared to previous generation CAVE&trade; technology, Hoffmeister explained. &ldquo;The CAVE2&trade; design also accommodates off-axis vertical viewing angles, eliminating any 3D ghosting at the top or bottom of the large viewing area,&rdquo; he added. 

The development of the CAVE2&trade; technology was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy. Some of the royalties of licensing of the CAVE2&trade; system will help fund future research at EVL, explained Leigh. 

&ldquo;Every day we&rsquo;re hearing more and more about &lsquo;big data&rsquo;,&rdquo; Leigh commented. &ldquo;Advanced visualization systems like the CAVE2&trade; provide a lens to bring big data into focus - for deeper understanding and greater insight.&rdquo; 

Mechdyne expects major users of the CAVE2&trade; system will include universities, scientific research organizations, energy companies, and manufacturing and design organizations worldwide. 

<a href="http://www.mechdyne.com/cave2.aspx">More information about CAVE2&trade; technologies from Mechdyne</a> 

CAVE2&trade; and CAVE&trade; are trademarked by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 

About Mechdyne Corporation 
<a href="http://www.mechdyne.com">Mechdyne</a> is one of the world&rsquo;s leading providers of innovative visual information technologies. The company bends technology in ways that transform complex data into insights and ideas. To ensure customers succeed, Mechdyne provides comprehensive, customized solutions that include consulting, software, technical services and hardware integration. Mechdyne, with offices around the world, serves a global customer base. Customers include: leading government laboratories, energy companies, universities, manufacturing and design firms, U.S. armed forces, and other users of visual information technologies. 

News Media Contacts: 
Dawn Bentley, Marketing Supervisor 
Mechdyne Corporation 
Phone 641-352-5125 
Email dawn.bentley @ mechdyne.com 

Maxine Brown, Associate Director, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
Phone 312-996-3002 
Email maxine @ uic.edu

The CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment can display both 2D and 3D data simultaneously.

Mechdyne Corporation Licenses CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment from the University of Illinois at Chicago

The article &ldquo;A &lsquo;Big Data&rsquo; Freeway for Scientists&rdquo; by John Markoff appeared the March 20, 2013 issue of the New York Times. The article profiles Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego. The article concerns Big Data, a U.S. government initiative that recognizes the need to improve scientists&rsquo; ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. 

The article concludes by mentioning a presentation Smarr gave last month at Calit2, in which he did a collaborative session with EVL to demonstrate how very-high-speed networks will facilitate the ability to share data and scientific visualization information among scientists. Calit2&rsquo;s large tiled display wall was connected to EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; System, and both displays were running SAGE (the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment developed by EVL). Smarr spoke with EVL&rsquo;s Professor Andrew Johnson and several EVL graduate students, and they shared scientific visualizations of Big Data. 

More specifically, today, data can be stored anywhere - processed elsewhere - and analyzed somewhere else. As the article states, &ldquo;Increasingly, computers used by scientific researchers are starting to escape the boundaries of a single box or even cluster and spread out to become &lsquo;virtual,&rsquo; in some cases across thousands of miles.&rdquo; Though his campus has a high-speed research network to locations in the U.S. and worldwide, Smarr is helping re-engineer it to achieve a 10-fold improvement, or 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps). UIC recently upgraded its campus&rsquo; research network to 100Gbps with major support from the National Science Foundation. In particular, the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) has 100Gbps into its lab, and its many devices, including the new CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality System, connect to this backbone. 

<a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/a-big-data-freeway-for-scientists/">Read the New York Times article</a> 

<a href="http://youtu.be/Ar7vmMIM7q8">Watch a video of the Smarr&rsquo;s 45-minute collaborative session with EVL</a>

Larry Smarr director of Calit2 demonstrates a 3-D image of his abdomen, transmitted via the new high-speed Prism optical network at UCSD.

UIC / EVL mentioned in New York Times: A Big Data Freeway for Scientists

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013, the WTTW television news show &ldquo;Chicago Tonight&rdquo; aired an ~8 minute &ldquo;Scientific Chicago&rdquo; segment on the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and its CAVE2&trade; System. 

Reporter Ash-har Quraishi showcased EVL&rsquo;s collaboration with UIC BioEngineering and the College of Medicine&rsquo;s Department of Neurosurgery to study the vasculature of the brain, as well as a new collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry on visualizing connectomes; i.e., comprehensive maps of neural connections in the brain. Additional applications by EVL and its collaborators were also highlighted. 

<a href="http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/04/23/cave2">See the video segment on CAVE2 and an accompanying article on the WTTW website</a>

EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment

WTTW airs story on EVL and CAVE2&trade; System - Tuesday, April 23

PCWorld&rsquo;s sister publication TechHive (1.2 million monthly unique visitors) published the story &ldquo;The art of numbers: Who knew Big Data could look so cool?&rsquo; on September 18, 2013. 

Jason Leigh, director of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), is quoted on the need for visualization of Big Data. The article highlights the EVL CAVE2&trade; neuroscience application in which scientists explore a 3D map of neural connections in the brain (called connectomes) based on data taken from an MRI scan. 

The story&rsquo;s author, Narasu Rebbapragada, followed up with email to EVL saying &ldquo;I became fascinated with this topic while working the story, so please stay in touch on your future projects.&rdquo; 

<a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2048715/the-art-of-numbers-who-knew-big-data-could-look-so-cool-.html">Read the full story</a>

EVL researchers explore connectomes in CAVE2. Data provided by UIC Dept. of Psychiatry.

The art of numbers: Who knew Big Data could look so cool?

Attendees of SIGGRAPH 94 experienced the actual use and future direction of scientific visualization in computational science and engineering in VROOM - the Virtual Reality Room. 

Over 40 projects involving over 200 researchers and programmers were demonstrated in CAVE and BOOM areas for four days of the conference held in Orlando this past July.

SIGGRAPH &rsquo;94 Visual Proceedings - VROOM

SIGGRAPH &rsquo;94 Visual Proceedings

Repairing severe human skull injuries requires customized cranial implants, and current visualization research aims to develop a new approach to create these implants. 

Following pre-surgical design techniques pioneered at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1996, researchers have developed an immersive cranial implant application incorporating haptic force feedback and augmented reality. The application runs on the Personal Augmented Reality Immersive System (PARIS&trade;), allowing the modeler to see clearly both his hands and the virtual workspace. The strengths of multiple software libraries are maximized to simplify development. This research lays the foundation to eventually replace the traditional modeling and evaluation processes.

The defect tool traces a path for extracting the defect geometry

Pre-surgical Cranial Implant Design using the PARIS&trade; Prototype

ACM Copyright rules prohibit putting the PDF on our website. Please follow the links below to review or purchase the article. 

<a href="http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1012037.1012059">&ldquo;Designing Cranial Implants in a Haptic Augmented Reality Environment&rdquo; - CAMC August 2004.</a> 

<a href="http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy">Copyright 2004 by ACM, Inc. - Copyright Restrictions on use can be viewed here.</a> 

Repairing severe human skull injuries requires customized cranial implants. Traditionally, medical sculptors have employed their anatomical modeling expertise to sculpt prosthetic implants using clay and wax. However, even with the aid of automated manufacturing techniques, the design process remains expensive in terms of labor, materials, and money. Any modification to a sculpted implant requires fabricating a new model from scratch. Techniques developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1996 have greatly improved this practice. Virtual reality research now aims to augment these tools and methods within a networked digital medium. 

Closing large cranial defects offers patients therapeutic benefits, including restoring the shape of the head, protecting vital brain tissue, minimizing pain, reducing operating and recovery time, and in some cases even improving cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, many factors limit cranial implant availability. First among them, insurance companies often do not support this form of reconstruction due to the high cost of labor and manufacturing. Second, because only neurosurgeons and medical modelers have the specialized anatomical and technical knowledge to do the work, assembling the necessary expertise is difficult; travel expenses for both patients and specialists further increase the overall cost. Finally, the process of solidifying implant material exudes extreme temperatures. Exposing the brain to these temperatures damages tissue, so presurgical implant design is often critical to reducing patient risk. Traditional cranial implant fabrication and surgical placement methods depend on subjective skills and procedures.

A medical sculptor &ldquo;touches&rdquo; a cranial defect while sitting at PARIS

Designing Cranial Implants in a Haptic Augmented Reality Environment

ImmersiveTouch&trade; is the next generation of augmented virtual reality technology, being the first system that integrates a haptic device, with a head and hand tracking system, and a high-resolution and high-pixel-density stereoscopic display. Its ergonomic design provides a comfortable working volume in the space of a standard desktop. The haptic device is collocated with the 3D graphics, giving the user a more realistic and natural means to manipulate and modify 3D data in real time. The high-performance, multi-sensorial computer interface allows easy development of medical, dental, engineering or scientific virtual reality simulation and training applications that appeal to many stimuli: audio, visual, tactile and kinesthetic.

ImmersiveTouch Prototype

Design of the ImmersiveTouch&trade;: a High-Performance Haptic Augmented Virtual Reality System

Finger extension is an important hand function and is crucial for object exploration and manipulation. Unfortunately, the impairment of this motor function is common among stroke survivors. A training environment incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) in conjunction with assistive devices has been developed for the rehabilitation of finger extension. The environment consists of three components: the stroke survivor user element consisting of AR equipment / software and body-powered orthosis; the therapist element comprised of monitoring / control interface with visual, audio and force feedback; and the networking module which interconnects these two. In this paper we present the structure of this environment along with the results from a pilot case study with a stroke survivor.

Demonstration of the training environment on ICORR conference, with wireless joystick control

An Augmented Reality Training Environment for Post-Stroke Finger Extension Rehabilitation

Impairment of hand function is prevalent among stroke survivors, motivating the search for effective rehabilitation therapy. Recent studies have suggested that for upper extremity functional recovery, repetitive training with virtual reality is helpful. Repetitive training can be facilitated with assistance from mechanical devices. Thus, we have developed a training environment that integrates augmented reality (AR) with assistive devices for post-stroke hand rehabilitation. The AR element of our environment utilizes head mounted display and virtual objects for reach-and-grasp task training. The assistive device consists of either a body-powered orthosis (BPO) or a pneumatic-powered device (PPD), both of which are incorporated into gloves. This environment can be easily set up and calibrated, is customizable for individual users, and requires active user participation. Additionally, it can be used with both real and virtual objects, as desired. We are currently conducting pilot case studies to assess ease of use and efficacy. At present, one stroke survivor from each of the three training conditions, AR-with-BPO, AR-with-PPD and AR-only (acting as the control), has completed the 6-week training paradigm. Preliminary findings suggest user acceptance of the technology and some potential for beneficial effects.

Researchers developed various real-life living environments to  motivate training of post-stroke users

Integration of Augmented Reality and Assistive Devices for Post-Stroke Hand Opening Rehabilitation

Stroke is among the leading causes of adult disability in Europe. While finger flexion often appears spontaneously within weeks after a cerebrovascular accident, finger extension is less likely to exhibit recovery and creates difficulty for voluntary hand opening. A study from the UK reports that over half of the subjects studied depended on others for assistance six months post-stroke. 

We present a training environment for rehabilitation of hand opening in stroke survivors. This environment integrates augmented reality, assistive devices and the process of repetitive training of grasp-and-release tasks. The AR element utilizes head mounted display and virtual objects for reach-and-grasp task training. The assistive device consists of either a body-powered orthosis (BPO) or a pneumatic-powered device (PPD), both of which are incorporated into gloves. The 6-week grasp-and-release training sessions are performed 3 times a week and 30 minutes long for each.

The hand kinematics model, assistive devices and vitual objects for grasp

VR Post-Stroke Hand Opening Rehabilitation: An Approach Utilizing Virtual Reality, Body Orthosis and Pneumatic Device

Ventriculostomy is a neurosurgical procedure that consists of the insertion of a catheter into the ventricles of the brain for relieving the intracranial pressure. A distinct &ldquo;popping&rdquo; sensation is felt as the catheter enters the ventricles. Early ventriculostomy simulators provided some basic audio / visual feedback to simulate the procedure, displaying a 3D virtual model of a human head. Without any tactile feedback, the usefulness of such simulators was very limited. The first generation haptic ventriculostomy simulators incorporated a haptic device to generate a virtual resistance and &ldquo;give&rdquo; upon ventricular entry. While this created considerable excitement as a novelty device for cannulating ventricles, its usefulness for teaching and measuring neurosurgical expertise was still very limited. Poor collocation between the haptic device stylus held by the surgeon and the visual representation of the virtual catheter, as well as the lack of a correct viewer-centered perspective, created enormous confusion for the neurosurgeons who diverted their attention from the actual ventriculostomy procedure to overcoming the limitations of the simulator. We present a second generation haptic ventriculostomy simulator succeeding over the major first generation limitations by introducing a head and hand tracking system as well as a high-resolution high-visual-acuity stereoscopic display to enhance the perception and realism of the virtual ventriculostomy.

Augmented reality environment created by the ImmersiveTouch&trade;

Second Generation Haptic Ventriculostomy Simulator Using the ImmersiveTouch&trade; System

The haptics-based virtual reality periodontal training simulator project focuses upon the research and development of a prototype dental simulator for training of periodontal procedures. By the use of virtual reality and haptics technology, the periodontal simulator allows trainees to learn performing diagnosis and treatment of periodontal diseases by visualizing a three-dimensional virtual human mouth and feeling real tactile sensations while touching the surface of teeth, gingiva, bone and calculi with virtual dental instruments. 

Since periodontics requires dentists to depend primarily on tactile sensations to perform diagnostic and surgical procedures, the use of haptics is unquestionably crucial for a realistic periodontal simulator. 

The haptics-based virtual reality periodontal training simulator has been validated by experiments conducted by the College of Dentistry with faculty members and dental students, which demonstrates the scientific contribution and usefulness of the simulator as a vital part of the curriculum of the Department of Periodontics at UIC. 

The use of medical simulators has proved to increase patient safety and reduce risk associated with human errors in hospitals by allowing medical students to develop skills more efficiently in a shorter period of time. Even though medical simulators are currently being developed by a large number of universities and medical companies, the field of dental simulation has not been well exploited yet. This thesis focuses on the research and development of a haptics-based dental simulator specially designed for training and performance evaluation of dental and hygiene students and practicing professionals in Periodontics. The simulator is the result of a multidisciplinary project developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science, the Industrial Virtual Reality Institute of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and the Department of Periodontics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The goal of this collaboration between the College of Engineering and the College of Dentistry at UIC is the implementation of a dental simulator to help increase the quality of training for students and future practitioners in the field of periodontics. 

The simulator allows trainees to develop the skills needed to differentiate pathological and normal conditions, as well as to diagnose and treat periodontal diseases. Trainees can learn by feeling tactile sensations as they &ldquo;touch&rdquo; a computer-generated 3 dimensional (3D) model of a human upper and lower dental arches along with various oral components: teeth, gingiva and bone with a haptic device. The simulator also facilitates the learning of proper selection and manipulation of dental instruments to perform
periodontal procedures. 

This thesis is organized in six chapters. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the current commercially-available medical simulators, followed by manikin-based and haptics-based dental simulators previously developed. Chapter 3 gives background information about the diagnosis and treatment of most common periodontal diseases and proposes the use of haptics-based dental simulators to facilitate the learning of these activities. Chapter 4 shows the implementation details and the graphical user interface of the virtual reality periodontal simulator. Chapter 5 describes the use of the simulator for periodontal training, and reports the results obtained after its validation by the College of Dentistry at UIC. Finally, chapter 6 outlines the conclusions of this work and suggests future research and development.

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