Think of Virtual Reality and it’s mostly fun and games that come to mind. But there’s a lot of useful, real world applications that will soon open up exciting possibilities in areas such as medicine, for example. [Victor] from the Shackspace hacker space in Stuttgart built an Augmented Reality Ultrasound scanning application to demonstrate such possibilities.
But first off, we cannot get over how it’s possible to go dumpster diving and return with a functional ultrasound machine! That’s what member [Alf] turned up with one day. After some initial excitement at its novelty, it was relegated to a corner gathering dust. When [Victor] spotted it, he asked to borrow it for a project. Shackspace were happy to donate it to him and free up some space. Some time later, [Victor] showed off what he did with the ultrasound machine.
As soon as the ultrasound scanner registers with the VR app, possibly using the image taped to the scan sensor, the scanner data is projected virtually under the echo sensor. There isn’t much detail of how he did it, but it was done using Vuforia SDK which helps build applications for mobile devices and digital eye wear in conjunction with the Unity 5 cross-platform game engine. Check out the video to see it in action.
Thanks to [hadez] for sending in this link.
Very cool. First they were unobtainable, now they fished outa dumpsters, tomorrow they will be in blister packs at the drugstore – as it is with everything it seems.
Drugstores around here already have ultrasound heart detectors for pregnant mothers. There are reports of mothers over-using these too, and heating up their baby to developmental detriment.
“There are reports”?
Fetal Doppler units, which are used to listen to the heartbeat, that are sold in the USA are regulated by the FDA and use very low acoustic output power, It is a single element continuous wave Doppler unit, which further reduces the amount of mechanical vibration and heating of tissue cells.Therapeutic ultrasound units, which are used to treat muscle and joint problems, use higher levels of output power that are meant to disrupt and heat the cells. Even though the use of diagnostic ultrasound has been found to be safe over the past 40 years, it is still recommended, it is still recommended to use it only for as long as needed to make a diagnosis.
this makes it real handy to help visualize how ultrasound actually shows cross-sections. Awesome hack!
Neato idea. I think he needs some matching gel there to get a better picture. At least he should wet his arm.
and i did, the ultrasound device i use, is too old, from 80’s.. good that it brings any image at all:)
I am a doctor and AR enthusiasist. I think Victor’ app will be a milestone in AR augmented medical imaging. Is it also possible to have a steady image with a desired angle at the examination field?
yes it is, i made a prototype device, that allows to stream video feed from any Ultrasound Device
More like Augmented Bullshit. He hasn’t even calibrated the scaling on the ultrasound image to correspond to real world scaling. I highly doubt he’s even correctly registered the image plane against the ultrasound scanning plane (which you CANNOT assume is perfectly aligned with the handle).
And how many points are they awarded for the idea?
2 points
Hey! Cool thing! I already did some image recognition with added virtual objects using vuforia but how do I get the stream there instead of an object? Do you use a flat rectangle and then you use it as stream surface? And do I need additional software for this part (streaming)? Thanks man!
ah i think you just used the vuforia core samples….