X ray vision1/25/2024 ![]() ![]() The researchers also think X-AR could help technicians to pick out the exact tool or parts for the job. If a bunch of clothes were heaped in a giant pile, the thinking goes, it could help a worker easily pick out something specific. Once selected, its location is highlighted with a sphere, with a path of footsteps projected on the ground - even if the item is buried behind arrays of boxes and other objects.ĭuring testing, the X-AR was able to pinpoint items within around four inches, guiding users to the correct item with 96 percent accuracy. First, a user would look up the item through a floating menu. The intended purpose of X-AR is decidedly less dramatic than how X-ray vision is deployed in comics.īasically, the idea is that warehouse and retail workers could use the tech to help locate items in a vast inventory. "Our whole goal with this project was to build an augmented reality system that allows you to see things that are invisible - things that are in boxes or around corners," said senior author Fadel Adib, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, in a press release. These items then pop up as a holographic visual, in theory allowing a user to locate the items faster. In reality, it beams out radio signals to find items labeled with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. And yes, it does endow the wearer with the ability to see through stuff - sort of.įortunately, it doesn't actually send out harmful X-rays. It's now possible for your average Joe Blow to see through objects - with the right bleeding-edge tech, that is.Īs detailed in a new paper, researchers at MIT have designed such a device in the form of a modified Microsoft Hololens headset they're calling X-AR. If you want "X-ray vision," you may no longer need to be an actual Superman. He estimates that it will only be a few years before the technology is good enough to use in real operations – but it could be decades before they are deemed safe enough for real patients, he says."There isn't anything like this today." Discount Superpower ![]() “The world of surgery is quite a conservative one,” he says. They hint at what is possible but there are huge technological and regulatory hurdles to overcome before they become a reality. Brain surgery is another area where it might be useful to have highly detailed overlays that help a surgeon know exactly where to operate.īut all of these devices are still a long way from making their way into surgical theatres, Ahmed says. Scopis, an augmented reality software firm, has created a similar system designed to help spinal surgeons track the position of their patient’s vertebrae during an operation. “For certain operations and for certain specialities the system sounds very useful,” Ahmed says. ![]() It could be coupled with touch-sensitive surgical tools that warn surgeons when they get too close to a nerve, he says, or include virtual projections of the tools themselves so surgeons carrying out keyhole surgery can keep an eye on what they are doing without needing to look at a real-time video of the operation on a screen. “It is a very embryonic technology,” he says.Įven so, Karger has a wishlist of features such a system could eventually have. Karger admits it will be years before it is tested with real patients. The system is interactive, too: using hand gestures the surgeon can tap on an organ to remove it from their view, allowing them to take a closer look at the area they are operating on.Īs the image is supposed to map exactly onto the patient, it must be pinpoint accurate to prevent surgical mistakes. This image is then plugged into the Microsoft HoloLens headset, so that the surgeon sees the virtual 3D organs on the patient’s body. Karger’s augmented reality system uses MRI and CT scans to build up a 3D image of the inside of a patient’s body, with different organs automatically colour-coded by software. But he believes they could be precursors to fully automated surgical systems. “We can’t trust these systems at the moment,” he says. “We can take these very complicated specialist procedures and make them accessible to far less specialist surgeons,” he says.īut Shafi Ahmed, a surgeon at Royal London Hospital who live-streamed an operation in virtual reality last year, thinks that no amount of help from augmented reality can replace the hands-on experience of a specialist surgeon. Later versions of the system could include real-time feedback to help guide less experienced surgeons through complicated procedures, says Karger. ![]()
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