Pres. Daniels tests Wachs & Popescu technology
Pres. Daniels toured the Envision Center on Feb. 1. Staff and students demonstrated a number of projects they’ve been working on, including the System for Telementoring with Augmented Reality (STAR), developed by Wachs' and Associate Professor of Computer Science Voicu Popescu's team.
"President Daniels had seen the dramatic increase of VR [Virtual Reality] in the media and was curious what Purdue is doing in this field," said George Takahashi, Envision Center Technical Lead. Dr. Gary Bertoline, Dean of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and original founder of the Envision Center, had contacted Takahashi about demonstrating some of the center's VR work to Daniels.
How does STAR work? "The trainee wears an augmented reality head-mounted display. STAR overlays the placement of virtual surgical instruments suggested by a remote mentor directly onto the trainee's view of the operating field," said Popescu.
The System for Telementoring with Augmented Reality (STAR) is a multi-institution project sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. The primary objective of this project is to research, develop, and validate an augmented reality system that would improve the effectiveness of telementoring between surgeons. Telementoring involves procedural guidance of a trainee surgeon by an expert surgeon from afar using telecommunication. STAR is an innovative platform that relies on table and touchscreen displays, transparent screens, tablets, and color and depth sensors to increase the quality of the communication between mentor and trainee.