New Visual Search Engine Debut-Works with a cell phone photo! Medical Uses Next?

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I have been following the consumer device CeBIT show in Germany. Pocket-lint UK reports:

At the CeBIT show in Germany, Vodafone is demonstrating a trial service called “Otello”, which is a search engine that uses images, rather than words. Rather than use a word as a search term, Otello users can send images via MMS from their mobiles and the search service which then returns the results to the user’s phone as an “ordinary” search result.

A picture from a newspaper, billboard, book cover or place are all examples of what can be searched for.

Vodafone is running trials with a German newspaper that lets users find out more about stories by photographing the images that appear in the article and MMSing the images.

There’s no word on breaking this out of trial phase at this stage.

I just had a meeting with reps from a major medical device company where I discussed the potential for smart image tagging and identification in medical imaging. Just think of the potential when this smart technology could be applied to image pattern recognition for skin lesions, radiologic images, and pathology slides. Rural medicine will never be the same! Cell photo snap an image and link to a search engine to get a diagnosis (we know who wants that to happen). Right now the system is prepopulated with images then recognized. In the future neural net and patern recognition technology will take this a step forward. Similar systems already exist for pap smear screening of cytologic abnormalities including a commercially available system papnet (made by Neuromedical Systems, Inc. who filed for chapter 11 and sold their intellectual proprty to Autocyte Inc).

How Smartdust, Souveillance, Web 3.0, and Personalized Genetics Will Transform the Future of Medical Diagnostics

Posted on February 25, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

There has been a flurry of debate in the military, industrial, and privacy sectors on “smartdust” and the concept of “souveillance” – but no one has yet realized this technology is poised to springboard into medicine and transform medical diagnostics. Here I wanted to give you an overview of what this idea is and why you should keep your eye on it.

First the general concept background:

“Smartdust” refers to micro devices (called motes) which are detection microchips each potentially the size of a speck of dust. These grains of sand however can automatically self-network. So far people have conceived of these low-power distributed sensing networks as having functions for climate control systems, entertainment devices and especially for big brother type surveillance systems.

Wikipedia wrote “the smartdust concept was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister (University of California) in 2001 , though similar ideas existed in science fiction before then. A recent review discusses various techniques to take smartdust in sensor networks beyond millimeter dimensions to the micrometre level. A typical application scenario is scattering a hundred of these sensors around a building or around a hospital to monitor temperature or humidity, track patient movements, or inform of disasters, such as earthquakes. In the military, they can perform as a remote sensor chip to track enemy movements, detect poisonous gas or radioactivity. The ease and low cost of such applications have raised privacy concerns.” Beyond web 2.0 vast networks of these real time sensors are once possible technology leap of the yet inknown web 3.0.

General concept – What is Souveillance?: is a term from Steve Mann that refers to “bottom up” surveillance using smart dust as opposed to “top down” big brother networks looking at us little people. Here instead activities are recorded from the “perspective of a participant in the activity, typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet.” Remember the impact of the Rodney King video and of all the user generated video content on the web. Now fast forward to a world where a large segment or even a majority of the populice had real time streaming video devices on all the time (no we are not going to discuss the porn angle on this). This has also been called “inverse surveillance”.

Privacy advocates have been debating the merits or horrors of this type of sensor technology. I serve on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation which is dedicated to protecting us from future technological threats through advocacy research and education. They have been having a heated debate on the “paradox of smart dust: we may not live without the greater security provided by smart dust, but many think they could not live with smart dust impinging on our privacy.’

Medical Implications: I have a vision that once this type of low power networked microsensor technology exists it will logically lead to medical sensor technology. Potential uses I see include:

mass screening for infectious disease or bioterror agents. Subjects walking into screening areas could be checked for signature molecules associated with infectious agents. Just as we have metal detectors and now have molecular signature detectors (the litle wipe test for explosives at the airport) we will have such biological screening techology.
The next step will be similar screening for disease states. Metabolomics is one such technology. Metabolomics is the study of the small-molecule metabolite byproducts left behind from cellular processes. In simple terms it’s like examining poop. The concept is that by measuring the collection of all the byproducts of the cells metabolism you can get a snapshot of the physiology of a cell or organism that translates to health. One such sensor is being developed as a breath sensor for disease. This could lead to Star Trek like medical sensors.
Similarly, such technology will lead to individual genetic screening for disease risk using chips that interact with the tiny bits of DNA we shed every time we touch something. Companies commercializing this approach also already exist and have products.
Taking a clue from smart dust we will then inject such sensors into our bodies where thy could circulate in the bloodstream or sit in the abdminal cavity silently sensing for disease, infectious agents, or the DNA or signature molecules of a cancer cell. Alternative chips could exist that sit and slowly release drugs when such cell reappear once a patient is diagnosed.

I will be writing more about the details of these concepts and devices being developed in future posts now that I have introducted the concepts. Let me know what you think!

Retraction From Pointe Conception Medical

Posted on February 15, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

As a practicing physician, consultant to industry and the investment community, and medical technology blogger, my independence is of utmost importance to me.

Pointe Conception Medical issued the following statement today:

“Pointe Conception Medical (PCM) regrets the use of the quote from Dr. Steven Palter in our presentation materials. Dr. Steven Palter did not provide PCM permission to use his name or any type of endorsement from him in any of our promotional materials. Steven Palter is not affiliated in any way with Pointe Conception Medical.”.

New HD Disk Format

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

EngadgetHD reports on New 3xDVD;

Comin’ straight outta Thuringia is the first news we’ve heard in a year about HD DVD’s red-laser cousin, 3X DVD. CDA Datenträger Albrechts GmbH has announced its started production of 3X DVDs, which are basically HD content, compressed with VC-1 or MPEG-4 and AACS DRM, on a standard red laser DVD that is readable only by HD DVD players. The advantage is that it costs the same to produce as a regular DVD, and CDA is apparently producing dual-sided DVD-10 discs, with standard DVD content on one side, and HD on the other. Of course, with several German studios dropping HD DVD support (along with a few others you may have heard of) its hard to see who will take advantage of CDA’s new capabilities.

Someone needs to step up and put a recordable HD format onto the HD endoscopy sets in the OR. Even the HD systems record in SD. I am waiting for recordable Blu-ray or even better a flash or disk based AVCHD solution.

Next Gen Mini-PS3 Cell Chips -Next Medicine Imaging Revolution?

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

“ Though sold as a game console, what will in fact enter the home is a Cell-based computer. ” – Ken Kutaragi

“Cell-based computers will revolutionize medical imaging” – Docinthemachine

The IBM Cell graphics processor at the heart of the PS3 is a remarkable chip. Cell is shorthand for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture. It has been described as “seemingly obscene computing capabilities for what will rapidly become a very low price.”

A newer miniaturized lower power version has just been announced by ars technica that I predict will make it to medical video and VR processing. I recently led a session on the use of VR in medicine where Andy Van Dam (VR pioneer , professor of computer science at Brown, and founder of Siggraph) and I spoke about the future of VR processing. He predicted that the video grame industry hardware innovations will make the most dramatic strides and that this technology will then trickle down to VR due to its sheer massive computational power- beyond that of the old CAVEs of DARPA.

You may be unaware that this represent a new form of computer processing:

The Cell concept was originally thought up by Sony Computer Entertainment inc. of Japan, for the PlayStation 3. The genesis of the idea was in 1999 when Sony’s Ken Kutaragi “Father of the PlayStation” was thinking about a computer which acted like Cells in a biological system. A patent was applied for listing Masakazu Suzuoki and Takeshi Yamazaki as the inventors in 2002

The architecture as it exists today was the work of three companies: Sony, Toshiba and IBM. Sony and Toshiba previously co-operated on the PlayStation 2 but this time the plan was more ambitious and went beyond chips for video games consoles. The aim was to build a new general purpose processor for a computer.

In lay terms here is the muscle behind the processor:

The setup of the Cell processor is like having a team of processors all working together on one chip to handle the large computational workload needed to run next-generation video games. In order to understand how the Cell processor works, it helps to look at each of the major parts that comprise this processor.

The “Processing Element” of the Cell is a 3.2-GHz PowerPC core equipped with 512 KB of L2 cache. The PowerPC core is a type of microprocessor similar to the one you would find running the Apple G5. It’s a powerful processor on its own and could easily run a computer by itself; but in the Cell, the PowerPC core is not the sole processor. Instead, it’s more of a “managing processor.” It delegates processing to the eight other processors on the chip, the Synergistic Processing Elements.

The computational workload comes in through the PowerPC core. The core then assesses the work that needs to be done, looks at what the SPEs are currently processing and decides how.

Watch out for our robot PS3 overloards. This Chip has the potential to expand itself and distribute workloads over networks. Don’t worry this is not some Singularity scenario where the chips start to think on their own. Here is a review of the potnetial of the chip:

Chip giants such as Intel have already started working on dual-core chips, but Cell goes several steps further by giving processing units a measure of independence. Current multicore chips typically chop a single computing task into parts, which are distributed among processing units. Cell’s processing units–called “software cells”–can handle completely separate jobs.

“The software cells are designed to be kind of self-contained–they can kind of roam around,” Halfhill said.

Cells can even roam over a network, allowing the processor to perform a type of distributed or grid computing, an increasingly popular enterprise technique in which demanding tasks are divvied up among a gang of networked computers. A PlayStation 3 could borrow unused processing power from other consoles on a network, for example, to complete a demanding task such as delivering streaming video.

“The Cell architecture is designed to make grid computing almost universal,” Halfhill said. “It makes distributed processing part of the design. If you have several of these machines on a network, the work can be spread across a network.”

The cell design can allow cooperation between video devices: “This architecture is not fixed, if you have a computer, PS3 and HDTV which have Cell processors they can co-operate on problems. They’ve been talking about this sort of thing for years of course but the Cell is actually designed to do it. According to IBM the Cell performs 10x faster than existing CPUs on many applications. This may sound ludicrous but GPUs (Graphical Processors Units) already deliver similar or even higher sustained performance in many non-graphical applications.”

Medical uses: We are at the cusp of a revolution due to the integration of computer video processing and surgical and radiological imaging. Details of this concept of mine are here and a podcast here. As we move ahead with virtual imaging and newer forms of optical processing it is the computational power of these kinds of chips that will be enabling.

Disclosure: As I previously wrote, I was chosen to be a Sony Medical HD Luminary Site. I receive no financial payment for this relationship which is only with Sony’s Medical division and is part of my medical research work on surgical tools and imaging. Heck- I had to buy my PS3 at Best Buy just like anybody else.

Wireless HDTV- TV Today OR Tomorrow

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Here’s the next installment in my series on HDTV in the OR and the emerging use of HD for endoscopic surgery. Belkin introduced a new device for consumer HD video at CES that uses wireless technology to transmit the signal. In the past the enormous bandwidth of HD precluded the use of wireless transfers.

From what I have been told- the technology was developed by Amimon and is called WHDI. They report on the tech that:

WHDI™ – Wireless High Definition Interface sets a new standard for wireless high-definition video connectivity. It provides a high-quality, uncompressed wireless link which can support delivery of equivalent video data rates of up to 3Gbps (including uncompressed 1080p) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, conforming to FCC regulations. Equivalent video data rates of up to 1.5Gbps (including uncompressed 1080i and 720p) can be delivered on a single 20MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, conforming to worldwide 5GHz spectrum regulations. Range is beyond 100 feet, through walls, and latency is less than one millisecond.

WHDI™ enables a wireless video link that offers the same functionality, cost and quality as a wired link. Practically all of the hundreds of millions of wired connections between video sources and displays today are based on delivery of uncompressed video. In order to replace these wired links, the wireless interface needs to be uncompressed as well.

The problem with traditional wireless modems for video is that they treat ever data bit equally. This new technology does not. WHDI takes the uncompressed HD video stream and breaks it into elements of importance. The various elements are then mapped onto the wireless channel in a way that give elements with more visual importance a greater share of the channel resources, i.e. they are transmitted in a more robust manner.

I presented research a few years ago on the development of a new endoscope that used distal CMOS imaging chios and distal end LED ilumination. The advantage of this is the ability to eliminate light and power cables once it goes battery powered. The developoment of wireless HD video transmission is vital to make the scopes totally wireless. Some details of this project and wireless power charging are here. The technology could also be used to develop real time image review from pill- cams.

You may want to check out past posts on the use of video compression as another tool enabling wireless OR’s.

Docinthemachine Research Featured on 20/20! MedTechno Insights From the Day

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I previously wrote about the upcoming National Geographic Special Inside the Living Body and my work featured in the special. I was delighted when the producers of 20/20 called to request an interview with me on my research featured on the show and my vision of the future technological transformation of medicine. Bob Brown was interested in coming to interview me. They have already posted a description of the upcoming interview and a summary of the show.

They call it an “Unprecedented Journey Inside the Living Body- ‘We’re Seeing Things That We Had Never Seen Before,‘ Says Scientist (that’s me).

On their website they write:

Recent technological advances have allowed for such dramatic and amazing views of the inside of our bodies that watching the footage can feel like you’re in a science fiction film or on an imaginary expedition…In such a science fiction journey, the 1966 film “Fantastic Voyage,” a group of scientists and their submarine were miniaturized so they could be injected into a body in order to eliminate an otherwise unreachable brain clot.

“I use clips from that movie when I lecture about these new technologies,” said Dr. Steven Palter, the medical and scientific director of Gold Coast IVF in Syosset, N.Y. “Now, physicians can actually see the workings of the body and understand it in a way that they never could before.”

Palter, who has a medical technology blog called docinthemachine.com, is a pioneer of methods capable of producing spectacular high-definition surgical images. Palter obtained his footage by advancing well-established procedures that allow doctors to insert cameras through small incisions and view the target areas of their surgeries. He successfully hooked up high-definition cameras and, he said, was awestruck by the results.

“With high definition, we’re seeing things that we had never seen before … with depth perception, clarity and detail … because now it’s enormously clear and magnified. We have views that you don’t get with your naked eye.”

They also write about my autofluorescent laparoscopy research: “New Way of Seeing Ourselves”

The technology used for the National Geographic Channel is also clearly on its way to helping revolutionize medical care. Palter contributed to the development of what’s called an auto-fluorescent laparoscope, which exposes diseased tissue inside the body that a surgeon couldn’t otherwise see.

“Instead of using visible light, it makes the disease fluoresce,” Palter said. “If you look with your naked eye, you see nothing. When you switch on the light and the filters, all of a sudden the disease is glowing green, and you can see disease that’s beyond the resolution of your naked eye.”

The setup

Details and Insights from the Interview: It really was an amazing morning. I have done countless interviews and seminars with the media over the years and this really stood out for me. Perhaps most enjoyable was the genuine interest and fascination with the topic of their correspondent Bob Brown (who was also a first rate nice guy). They showed up at 8AM and took 1.5 hours to dismantle my office and set up the lighting. We started extra early with the fertility patients that day so they could be finished and out the door before the TV crew came in to protect their confidentiality and to not make them feel uncormfortable (always a key issue in my fertility practice Gold Coast IVF).

Directing the shoot

The cameras and the Crew: Being the techno videophile guy that I am I jumped at the chance to talk with independent film crew brought to shoot me. They had 3 cameramen/directors and there were 2 producers from 20/20, Bob Brown the correspondent, and a media relations rep from National Geographic (in case questions came up about their part). They set-up a 2 camera shoot in my office with blazingly hot spot lights to ensure I would be nice and sweaty on camera. They shot in standard BetacamSP. Of course I could not resist to ask them why they did not shoot in HD. They answered that the news shows inthe studios shoot in HD but that in the US all field work is done in SD. This is because there are countless freelancers and crews out there all using different equipment and all waiting for some semblance of an HD standard to evolve before they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in new HD cameras and editing and risk it being the “wrong format”. Wow- how similar to the confusion in the medical and consumer video sectors! I continued my fact-finding quest and asked about who was using what systems and the relative advantages of each- panasonic sony JVC image sensors, color fidelity, native chip resolution tape vs disk vs solid state recording editing etc etc all trying to gleam insights I could take back to medicine and the OR.

Showing Bob Brown (and cameraman) a Laparoscope

The interview and turning the tables: Bob interviewed me for 2.5 hours until they ran out of film. I was excited to share my excitement and passion for the subject of the future of medicine and surgery and how my work fits into this vision. Bob was interested in the medical technology behind the show. He asked a very wide range of questions from how I thought to merge HD video and surgerr back in 1999 to what I think is more beautiful – the earth from space or the vista of the internal human organs, to how will we pay for these new technology developments. He was interested in everything I was working on and what I thought would have the most impact. We discussed robotic assited surgery, natural orifice surgery (NOTES), augmented reality and head mounted displays, surgical simulators for training and the potential for real-dataset preoperative practice, virtual colonoscopy and 3D/4D ultrasound etc etc.

I had a chance to turn the tables a bit and ask him why they chose this topic and how they felt it would appeal to the lay public. He told me that TV shows like 20/20 they basically track viewers interest levels minute by minute as they shows air. He added that the medical pieces they ran have huge audience ratings and the more real the higher the appeal. We discussed how the netorks know that on shows like CSI it is often the medical technology that draws the audience in. He has a special talent in reporting human interest segments and has an amazing ability to distill down the high tech medicine we discussed and share with non-medical viewers how it will affect their lives.

Sharing the footage: After the interview he wanted to watch some of my HD surgical footage that I shot for National Geographic with the true HD 1080 16:9 system which I fortunately had available on HD XDCAM with a Sony ultrahigh resolution 24″ LCD HD monitor. Both the 20/20 people and the video crew were amazed by the resolution of the images and one of them remarked “If I need surgery I want them to use that“ Being video people the film crew and director’s understanding of the power of HD in the OR was immediate when they saw just a few seconds of the images. I continue to have the same degree of awe and fascination each time I operate with these systems.

Bob Brown was especially interested in my research on the development of autofluorescent laparoscopy and my concept of “FutureVision“- where surgical technology surpasses inate human senses and we watched those videos as well.

They finished off with few minutes of B-roll footage of Bob and I walking and talking in front of the hospital and requests for room cam OR footage and my AF surgery footage(all of which I was happy to share with them).

Bob Brown, the Producers, and the docinthemachine

The 20/20 show airs this Friday September 7th at 10PM on ABC- check it out!

DITM NG Special Website up- Interview with Wired Magazine

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I previously wrote about the upcoming National Geographic Special Inside the Living Body and my work featured in the special. I was also interviewed by Wired Magazine about the show and the technology behind it. You can read their take on it here (note – I have to email the author Sonia and explain that it is not a good idea to use the descriptor “Organ Porn” in conjunction with the work of gynecologist!).

One of the CG shots from the show

National Geographic has set up a website dedicated to the show with photos videos and facts. Lot’s of fascinating info and images to check out! They write:

From our first cry to our last breath, our bodies undergo a continuous second-by-second transformation. Every move we make and every outside stimulus triggers a reaction through the skin, bones, organs, muscles and cells. We breathe, on average, 700 million breaths in a lifetime; an adult skeleton is replaced every seven to 10 years; we shed as many as 30,000 dead skin cells every minute; and the food we eat travels 30 feet (9 meters) on its journey through our bodies. Now, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) takes you beneath the skin to reveal how our bodies evolve from birth to old age, and the amazing biological systems we need to thrive.
From the producers of NGC’s critically acclaimed In the Womb series, Inside the Living Body traces one “everywoman’s story”, using milestones to examine the everyday workings of a living, functioning body in ways not seen on television until now. Cutting-edge miniature endoscopic HD cameras delve deep inside the mouth, throat, heart, lungs, digestive tract, brain and reproductive organs to shed new light on how and why our bodies do what they do. Stunning photography in this two-hour special reveals universal moments in human development at the most minute level, providing insight into both our own individual metamorphosis and our shared human experiences.

(the bold is my part!)

The Show airs September 16th on the National Geographic Channel (and the NG HD channel!) at 8PM.

HD in the OR: The AVCHD Video Recording Format

Posted on August 13, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Can we go from this to this?

This post continues my series HD in the OR examining the current and future use of High Definition video in the Operating Room- as well as current and future HD technology. You can read background on my OR HD testing here. This was a big week – after working with the Stryker HD system in the OR a few days ago I operated in a new hospital today and walked right into a Linvatec HD system trial. Review info coming soon.

In this post I want to review the new HD video recording format AVCHD for you and explore if it has a potential space in the OR (sneak peak- the answer is a qualified “yes”).

First a bit of video in the OR history: One area that is relatively ignored is archiving video. As I have written before, for years the standard video archive format was simple consumer VHS, and for those of us who wanted the highest possible resolution of our archives- S-VHS. The use of consumer DV was never really widely adopted in the OR. I do remember a single Sony DVCAM based recorder that never really made it to widespread installations. If I recall correctly, it was Karl Storz who offered it briefly. I really wanted to use this format since it provided higher resolution (500 lines) and native firewire output for direct digital input into my computer for editing. Our only option for getting the video into these decks was S-video input since none of the major companies offered firewire output on their OR cameras (despite my requests).

What is AVCHD? Briefly, AVCHD is a relatively new digital compression and recording format for high definition video being promoted primarily by Panasonic and Sony.

How is AVCHD Better than Other HD Recoding Options?: The main difference is that the MPEG-4 technology that fuels AVCHD is roughly twice as efficient as the MPEG-2 technology used in HDV (the other consumer tape based HD recording options). What this means is that files are 1/2 the size but retain the same high quality. This compression is so effective that new camcorders have been developed that can directly record HD video in real time to a hard drive or even flash- based memory card (Panosonic has introduced a consumer AVCHD HD recorder that saves to SD cards and Sony one that saves to Memory Sticks). – And as I keep advocating- if video can be highly compressed and retain quality then wireless systems can be enabled or internet-based recording and archiving options. This is the Holy Grail for the surgeon in terms of documentation- online access to HD footage from the OR from the office.

Technical Details of The AVCHD Compression Format: Digitalcontentproducer has reviewed the format. AVCHD stands for Advanced Video Codec High Definition, and it’s based upon the AVC codec, a joint standard of the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and ISO (International Standardization Organization) groups. It’s also called H.264. AVC/H.264 is an advanced subset of MPEG-4 compression. H.264 is a very hot topic lately in the broadcast and internet video worlds.

AVCHD is Based on the Same Codec Used in Your IPOD: They comment also that while AVCHD is relatively new, AVC is an established standard—particularly in streaming video and it is the primary codec for iPod video. AVC is also starting to displace MPEG-2 in the cable TV and satellite TV markets, and it’s one of the three technologies available for HD DVDs (along with MPEG-2 and Microsoft’s VC1). Even the Sony PS3 will play it natively.

More Technical Details on The Video Files Produced: The AVCHD specification itself supports scalable frame sizes from 720×480 up to 1920×1080 in either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios. Like HDV, AVCHD video uses the 4:2:0 sampling format, which is superior to the 4:1:1 used in DV camcorders (less artifact and better color fidelity). AVCHD uses an MPEG-2 transport stream “wrapper,” and it is scalable up to 18Mbps

What is HDV – Why Not Use It?: HDV is the first consumer High Definition Video format released. It allowed the recording of HD footage on standard miniDV tapes. Unfortunately, its MPEG-2 based format still creates huge files and is not compatible with a disk (non-tape) based recording format. More on this format to follow in upcoming posts…

The Editing Quagmire: Editing is the current AVCHD shortcoming. Many software based NLE programs cannot edit AVCHD video leaving the recorded files of limited use in presentations inthe medical world. I predict this will change in the next 2 years. Today Vegas 7+ supports AVCHD editing (of course it does as a Sony product since they are backing this format in the consumer realm). Adobe Premiere still does not support the format and the message board logs are full of people being told by Adobe don’t hold your breath. Apple Final Cut Pro has announced support on the Mac side. Third party tools exist to transcode the video to allow any program to edit it but that is a royal pain. Both Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus and Pinnacle Studio 11 support AVCHD and even Blu-ray disc burning. Nero Ultra Edition Enhanced can process it as well.

Will We See AVCHD In The OR?- My Inside Insight: I have spoken to several Medical Video device companies and as of today there is no development in this area. Even a discussion I had with sources in the Medical Imaging Division of Sony would suggest this is not a format being aggressively pursured. If anyone is could push this technology into the Medical arena it could be Sony. They have the medical video hardware and the consumer AVCHD technology- and they are globally committed to AVCHD technology and HD medical video. For now the mainstay of documentation in the OR remains MPEG-2 based DVD recorders for at least the next two years is what you will see. (hint: and next blu-ray - more to come on this soon)

Then What are the OR advantages of AVCHD?

High HD video quality
smallest HD captured video file size
ability to archive in HD not SD
ability to record on removable flash media or a disk drive
ability to edit by surgeon with consumer software
potential for wireless streming and archiving HD systems

Quality Concerns: All early reviews of the AVCHD HD camcorders have however noted quality flaws when compared with their comparable HDV based tape systems. The errors seen have been primarily lower light sensitivity and moting artifacts and flaws (as expected with higher compressions codecs). This concerns me enough to delay upgrading my camcorder and I don’t want them in the OR until it is settled. The software will need to be tweaked at minimum.

I’ll post a line-up of the consumer AVCHD camcorders next

Then exciting insight from suprise trials this week of the latest HD systems from Stryker and Linvatec. Details coming from Docinthemachine HD OR system testing.

New video Connector Solution for the OR? Displayport!

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Continuing in my HD in the OR Series I wanted to share a video connection option for the future. Most current systems offer simple S-video or component video. As usual, the OR equipment lags a generation behind consumer video. This has has been my experience with the major consumer video and surgical video companies over the past 10 years. I can understand their viewpoint (a little). In the OR most want broad interconnectivity backwards compatibility and standards. The latest and greatest electronics is not what most OR committees demand. On the flip side, the video companies focus rightfully so on consumer video because that is where the market is. I had this discussion with JVC and SONY in 2000 when I first began my HDTV surgery project at Yale. The entire medical video market is but a tiny blip compared to home TV’s and camcorders.

Where are we today? SVIDEO and Component. What is used in the bleeding edge for your computer, home theater, or professional HD video studio? NONE OF THESE! The standard connections there include DVI, HDMI and High Definition Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI) for the pros. The consumer formats have copy protection as one of their major design requirements (movie studios don’t want you copying their HD moves). However the pro HD-SDI is the industry state of the art.

What’s next in the comsumer arena?

Engadget writes

industry’s move to DisplayPort is hotting up with AMD announcing ATI Radeon graphics processors supporting DisplayPort 1.1 in the “early 2008 timeframe.” Just in time to support Samsung’s new 30-inch panel scheduled to see production in Q2 2008. In fact, AMD just completed successful interoperability testing of their presumably “next-generation graphics processor” toting a native DisplayPort 1.1 transmitter.

Its advantages are another all-in-one audio video connector with high signal quality. Unfortuantely it also has copy protection as a major requirement. DisplayPort supports full bandwidth transmission over 3 meter (10ft) cable, and a maximum of 1080p resolution at 24bpp, 50/60Hz over a 15 meter cable.

Extensive technical details are here.