Medgadget Exclusive Archives

Digital ArtForms iMedic3D Brings Immersive Interaction to Medical Imaging

by Wouter Stomp on Dec 5, 2011 •

Digital ArtForms has launched iMedic3D, a pair of 3D mice for the navigation of 3D medical image data from modalities such as CT or MRI. Combined with a software viewer, it allows the user to immerse himself and navigate the 3D data in a more natural way.

We took the opportunity to catch a demo of their iMedic3D system to bring to you:

More from the press release announcing the system:

iMedic3D is a DICOM visualization application that immerses clinicians in their 3D data. It’s powered by Digital ArtForms Two-Handed Interface (THI), a powerful object and viewpoint manipulation technology that lets users almost instantly position themselves anywhere in their data, looking in any direction, and at any scale. iMedic3D’s decluttering tools give users easy access to features embedded in cluttered or solid datasets. In a study funded and overseen by the US Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) THI was shown to be 4-5 times as fast as a mouse in the hands of novices (47 minutes of training) and approaching 9 times the mouse in the hands of experienced users in the performance of fundamental 3D tasks. iMedic3D is available today without FDA clearance.

Press release: Digital ArtForms Debuts iMedic3D, a Radically Different Approach to Radiology, at RSNA ‘11…

Company homepage: Digital ArtForms…

Genetics / in the news... / Medgadget Exclusive / Nanomedicine / Thoracic Surgery

First Artificial Trachea Implants Breathe Life into Tissue Engineering

by Brian Klein on Dec 5, 2011
First Artificial Trachea Implants Breathe Life into Tissue Engineering

Last week, we announced that the second artificial trachea implant procedure had been performed under the leadership of Paolo Macchiarini, MD, PhD at the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden). To get some perspective on what this news means for the field of medicine and tissue engineering, Medgadget spoke with Dr. Macchiarini as well as David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience (Holliston, MA), a company that made the bioreactor used to create the tissue-engineered trachea implants.

“The most important thing to me is that we now have evidence that regenerative medicine has promise; we’ve proved that it works in the clinic,” says Macchiarini.

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Medgadget Exclusive / Radiology

Up Close with BodyTom Portable Full Body CT

by Gene Ostrovsky on Dec 2, 2011
Up Close with BodyTom Portable Full Body CT

Earlier this year NeuroLogica, a company producing portable imaging devices, received FDA clearance for its BodyTom full body CT scanner that can be wheeled around hospital as needed.  At RSNA 2011 in Chicago we had a chance to see the device and get a quick overview this interesting technology:

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Medgadget Exclusive / Radiology

Siemens Kinect Based Hands-Free Radiological Image Browser

by Gene Ostrovsky on Dec 1, 2011

At RSNA 2011 Siemens was showing off a concept product for hands-free navigation through CT/MRI/Ultrasound images.  The system utilizes Microsoft’s Kinect 3D camera for detection of hand gestures.

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Medgadget Exclusive / Radiology

Vizua 2D/3D Imagery Gone Mobile

by Gene Ostrovsky on Dec 1, 2011

At RSNA 2011 in Chicago this week we took an opportunity to see a demo Vizua’s system for radiological image sharing.  The cloud-based system allows anyone practically with any modern computer or mobile device to see and navigate through rendered data sets from a variety of modalities.  Rendering is done on the server and the images are streamed directly to the device, allowing for beautiful, high res images without needing a powerful processor.

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Genetics / Medgadget Exclusive / Oncology

Spray Painting Cancer Cells

by Shiv Gaglani on Nov 29, 2011
Spray Painting Cancer Cells

Two months ago we reported on the first ovarian cancer surgeries performed with fluorescence guidance. As described in the Nature Medicine paper, the international team of researchers from The Netherlands, Germany, and Indiana used folate coupled to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) to make ovarian cancer cells glow so they could be easily identified.

Now, in this week’s issue of Science Translational Medicine, another international team from Japan and Maryland reports their development of a spray-on probe that may provide even better sensitivity and fluorescent contrast than the folate-FITC counterpart. The editors of STM summarize this work well in the following note:

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Cardiology / Genetics / Medgadget Exclusive

Beating “Heart-on-a-Chip” May Revolutionize In Vitro Cardiac Studies

by Shiv Gaglani on Nov 23, 2011
Beating "Heart-on-a-Chip" May Revolutionize In Vitro Cardiac Studies

Much of what we know about organ physiology can be traced back to in vitro studies of cells in a cultured environment. For example, we know about ion channels and how they control the contractions of the heart because of early “patch-clamp” studies on cardiomyocytes, grown in the lab. This enabled early pharmacological studies through which drugs and compounds, like dobutamine or epinephrine, could be tested prior to animal and clinical trials.

A significant limitation of these studies, however, is that they often do not reflect the complexity and emergent properties present in 3D tissues. Researchers have circumvented this by growing cells in more intricate environments more representative of in vivo tissue. Despite this, a remaining challenge for cardiac research is the difficulty in measuring both the electrophysiological and contractile properties of heart tissue in vitro.

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Genetics / in the news... / Medgadget Exclusive

SCIPIO Appears Victorious in Initial Treatment of Heart Failure

by Shiv Gaglani on Nov 23, 2011
SCIPIO Appears Victorious in Initial Treatment of Heart Failure

“Scipio” is best known as the name of the masterful Roman general, Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Thanks to researchers at the University of Louisville and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he may soon have to share his nominal glory with an ongoing clinical trial.

The phase 1 study, “Cardiac Stem Cell Infusion in Patients with Ischemic cardiOmyopathy” (SCIPIO), set out to do something perhaps even more impressive than beating the Carthaginians. SCIPIO was the first in-human trial to assess whether cardiac stem cells (CSCs) can restore heart function in patients suffering from post-myocardial-infarction heart failure. The CSCs were isolated and expanded from a 1 gram atrial tissue sample taken from each patient during their coronary artery bypass.  Three to four months later, about one million CSCs were transplanted into each patient’s heart – the advantage of this design is the minimized risk of rejection due to the autologous source of the cells.

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Medgadget Exclusive / Sports Medicine

Medgadget’s First Look at the Striiv Fitness Tracker

by Scott Jung on Nov 17, 2011
Medgadget's First Look at the Striiv Fitness Tracker

Srtiiv is a company that “strives” to make fitness fun for all. They recently released a device (also called Striiv) that tracks when you’re walking, running, or climbing stairs on a device that fits conveniently on your keychain or in your pocket.

We saw a demo of Stiiv back in September at the Medicine 2.0 Summit, but we managed to get our hands on one of these fun devices to review. With all these new smart fitness trackers coming out, what makes Striiv so special?

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