Prototype

Ultrasound Guided Needle Placement Training Using Kinect

The prototype is complete!
The rendering module and the tracking module are fully integrated now. The needle visualization is also working. Right now the needle's radius (its actually a cylinder), is rather large. I did this in order to easily get the needle in screen, otherwise it would be very difficult. But this parameter is very easy to change, and can be tuned as per the needs of the ultrasound guided needle placement training.

Challenges:
Many of the challenges that we are facing are mechanical in nature. The probe and needle tracking is working well despite the fact we are not using any fancy setup for tracking them.

What has been found?
At the start of the project we were very anxious about the accuracy of the Kinect for tracking probe and needle. But we can now see that Kinect works very well for this application.

Future Work:
1. Improving accuracy of tracking by using sophisticated marker tracking setup
2. Developing the software in the form of a game so that new surgeons can monitor their own skill level