"Computer-Vision Assisted Surgery" Eric Grimson Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Computer Vision Group Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Bernard Gordon Chair of Medical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology 12:00 Noon Reception at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, October 11, 2001 102 Pettit Building (MiRC)

Abstract:

Imagine giving a surgeon an "X-Ray vision" ability, that is, allowing him to look at a patient and see through skin, bone, fat to visualize internal structures, like tumor or blood vessels, exactly as they occur within the patient. Imagine also allowing the surgeon to see structures that are not normally visible to the human eye, such as the position of functional cortex. Imagine allowing him to insert instruments through narrow openings in the body, yet still be able to visualize the full anatomical context around the instrument. Such capabilities would enable a surgeon to better plan procedures, to navigate through delicate procedures and to evaluate the effectiveness of surgical procedures, e.g "have I removed all of the tumor". This talk will describe such computer-vision guided surgical systems, currently in regular use at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for neurosurgical and other cases. The focus of the talk with be on the underlying computer vision algorithms used to construct patient specific models, and to accurately register them to the position of the patient in the operating room.

Bio:

Eric Grimson received a B.Sc. (Hons) in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Regina in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT in 1980. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, the Bernard Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering, and Associated Director of the AI Lab, all at MIT, and a Lecturer on Radiology at Harvard Medical School. For the past twenty-five years, he has conducted research on computer vision, and has authored two technical monographs in this field. Prof. Grimson currently heads the Computer Vision Group of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which has pioneered state of the art systems for object recognition, image database indexing, image guided surgery, target recognition, site modeling and many other areas of computer vision. Recently, his group has been active in applying vision techniques in medicine: for image guided surgery, minimally invasive surgery and medical analysis.