Due to the many advances in science and technology there are becoming even more advances in medicine. From medical scans that can produce thousands of images and terabytes of data for a patient in little time, to virtual MRI’s, these advances have a tremendous impact on our medical future.
In a TEDTalk entitled “Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing The Medical Data Explosion”, Swedish scientific visualization expert, Anders Ynnerman spoke about the effect visual graphics have on the medical field. According to TED, “Ynnerman studies the fundamental aspects of computer graphics and visualization, in particular large scale and complex data sets with a focus on volume rendering and multi-modal interaction”. During the TEDTalk, Ynnerman spoke about a computer tomography machine that uses x-ray beams to generate information about the body. According to Ynnerman, “this machine can be used to improve healthcare…and looking at what we are doing today with the machines that we have, we can get in a few seconds about 24,000 images of the human body”.
These medical scans produce thousands of images and data that can help individuals in the medical field in various ways. These advances in technology can help find a tumor on a patient, or it could even help with finding the cause of a patient’s death. Virtual autopsies allow the doctors to virtually go through the skin, flesh, and bones of a person’s body to see what is going on with them internally. These virtual autopsies could help distinguish metal artifacts in the body, damages in bone structure, bullet wounds, and knife stabbings. This not only helps with distinguishing ones cause of death, it helps to direct the criminal investigation in the right direction.
In the talk, Ynnerman then goes into more detail about advances that may come about in the future that will allow doctors and scientists to virtually touch data, and receive resistance and a feedback from what they touch. For example, a scientist would use their pen to virtually touch the heart and feel the heartbeat and how to heart valves are moving.
Another way of the future that Ynnerman addressed is a functional MRI, which would allow doctors and scientists to measure the structure of the brain, and the difference in magnetic properties of oxygenated blood, and blood that is depleted. These advances will allow doctors to virtually visualize his brain in real time.
Advances like these are truly a way of the future, and are extremely exciting to learn about because once these advances are widely implemented life would become so much easier for both doctors and patients. This is mainly because the doctors will have more access to beneficial information that could possibly save a patients life.
Below is the TEDTalk on Anders Ynnerman that I watched: