Natural interactions for medical image analysis

This is the Radiology (CT) department workflow as seen at the UMC Utrecht hospital during  my visit on February 6th, 2009.

This is a generalized and simplified summary of tasks done for a radiologic examination of a patient. This worflow changes in exception cases as for example in an emergency case. Details vary depending on type of scan.

download the full 4-pages-pdf including pictures here:
radiology-department-workflow-umc-utrecht.pdf

The first week of my project was full of new information and impressions. A new place to live, a new city to explore, a new office to work in and some nice people to get to know. I haven’t seen a lot of Eindhoven yet, but I’ve seen a lot of medical images and machines already. And that’s exactly what I am here for. I didn’t know anything about Radiologists before I came here. So I was reading a lot about them this week. Radiologists and medical imaging shaped up as something much more complex and much more interesting than I thought before.

My research was a bit unsystematic this week, mainly because I didn’t know anything before. Apart from visiting a hospital next week, I am aiming to focus on some key aspects for my research:

- Natural Interfaces, Touchscreens and beyond
- Automated Image Comparison (and artificial Intelligence and CAD)
- Image viewing, editing and enhancement
- Data Visualization (with medical 2D, 3D, 4D and 5D? data in mind)
- Healthcare 2.0 (everything goes digital: teleradiology, PACS, EMR)
- Radiologists today (workflow, human interactions, technology usage, problems etc…)
- Medical Imaging (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, Fluoroscopy, Nuclear Medicine and how these work together)
- Market research of devices and concepts

Also we visited the Philips Healthcare showroom in Best this week. I had the chance to play around with some pretty expensive scanners and with a working Radiologists Reading Room. I hope to get a set up of a reading room in our office soon. Here are some picture of the showroom: