Nicholas Lord
Johns Hopkins University
Department of Computer Science
CISST Division
(Photo courtesy of IBM Corp)
The design, implementation, and framework of a system that permits any display of information to be projected onto planar surfaces anywhere in a room, will be discussed in detail in the following proposal. The completion of this system will revolutionize the way surgical displays provide doctors with information. This project has countless other uses to professionals worldwide from entertainers to engineers. With the placement of this system, a surgeon will be provided with a lightweight, portable, and sterile display board in the operating room. This system, AMIPS (Anwhere,Multipurpose Image Projection System) may one day replace the monitor as they decided means of image projection.
The idea for this project was developed by IBM Corp as an extension to their Everywhere Displays System. Generally, this system was designed to correct for the distortions associated with projecting an image. These distortions occur when the projector cannot be placed at a perpendicular angle with the plane in which it is projecting. Their technique to adjust for these distortions rely heavily on using video hardware to render an image that will be “deskewed*” by the computer so that when it is projected onto the display board, it is projected correctly. Both systems, ED and AMIPS, consist of a projector, a pan-and-tilt mirror and a video camera (see picture). Using a computer graphics technique (i.e. texture mapping), the ED-system can correct distortions caused by non-perpendicular projections, while AMIPS utilizes a one to one map correspondence technique. The current method employed by IBM involves manually adjusting the parameter to the graphics system using human feedback. Since this unnecessarily limits the usefulness of the technology, the concept of AMIPS was born. The completion of AMIPS will demonstrate a completely automated solution to the warped image problem.
Additionally, to help reduce the need for a surgeon to use conventional input controls for a computer (mouse, keyboard, joystick, etc) AMIPS will employ a touch screen to circumvent this difficulty. The design of this solution will aided by IBM’s touch screen technology and Johns Hopkins CIRL.
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