Gaming technology helps researchers enhance medical imaging

British researchers might be able to solve a common problem in medical imaging by using Microsoft's Kinect video game technology, according to a press release from the Imperial College London.

Many patients, particularly those with dementia or other conditions, find it hard or impossible to keep completely still during scans taken for diagnosis or in research studies.

Movement of the body will cause blurring effects in the imaging process, which will lead to wasted or inaccurate data, making diagnosis and treatment less effective and more costly.

Researchers from the Imperial College London has teamed up with another institute to integrate Kinect camera technology into positron emission tomography imaging.

Kinect is a motion sensing device produced by Microsoft for its Xbox gaming console. It uses a 3D camera to detect gamers' movements so that they don't need a controller to interact with Xbox's User Interface.

The team is working with Microsoft and Siemens to develop a reliable and easy-to-use system that can be integrated seamlessly into the scanning environment. They hope to achieve this by employing the latest version of Kinect's camera technology in combination with the advanced computer vision algorithms, according to the press release.

Coupled with the latest high resolution medical scanners, the resulting images should be free of the effects of any movement during the scan, researchers said.

Professor Roger Gunn of the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, leads the project. He said this is an innovative way of capitalizing on multi-billion dollar investments in the home entertainment industry and applying it to develop an accurate and low-cost solution in the medical sector. Endit