National Geographic’s The Living Body: DITM Featured in World’s First HDTV Broadcast of Surgical Procedure

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I’ve mentioned the National Geographic Special “The Living Body” and wanted to fill you in on why this is such an exciting project for me. The show follows a woman from birth through life and death and traces the function of all of her bodily systems. It will feature my surgical laparoscopy footage as the world’s first broadcast of surgery in HDTV. To produce this I used a protype laparoscopy system that visualizes the highest resolution images ever seen of the human body. If you watch this show you’ll see endoscopic images on your living room HDTV set better than almost any surgeon has seen in the OR!

I became involved when I received a call from the NG people and ther production team out of London. They had heard of my work in developing HDTV endoscopic surgery and that I had performed the world’s first HDTV laparoscopy back in 2000. This show was being produced in HDTV for braodcast in HD on the National Geographic HD channel (then downconverted to standard definition-SD for traditional broadcast and DVDs). They were looking for some HD footage of internal organs.

The original HD projects I did back in 2000 used a prototype 4-chip HD from JVC camera modified from a microscope camera for use in laparoscopic surgery. At that time we had to use a w-vhs recorder as this was the only way to record the 1080i signal in HD.

I became very excited at the prospect of helping them with this project since I had been testing a new endoscopic system that was unique in having the world’s highest reolution ever as well as the ability to record in full lossless HD using a new type of blu-ray HD DVD based recording system.

I recorded a series of shots for them of all the internal pelvic and abdominal organs and am delighted it made the final edit of the show. You’ll see an egg developing inside an ovarian follicle, the bowel, liver and gall bladder, fallopian tubes, cervix and uterus.

My next post will review the technolgy between the HDTV system I used and some images from it.

The Most Life-Like Android Ever Made: Video

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Meet Jules, the most life-like robot you have ever seen. The robot is programmed with the most sophisticated artificial intelligence features. It can recognize babies vs. adults, its creator and people he has ‘met’.

video of “intelligent” android

Japanese Cultural Society: How to Eat Sushi Etiquette – Sunday Fun Post 2

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Continuing in the Sunday Fun Posts from Fans in Japan. This one is from the “Japan Culture Lab” on How to Eat Sushi- All the Japanese etiquette you need. I went a good ways through it before realizing it was a spoof. (The two guys in the videos are a comedy duo in Japan called “Ra-menzu” (Rahmens) ラーメンズ who also feature on the Mac vs. PC ads.

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Japanese TV and humor is unique in the world. I spent some time in Yokahama and Tokyo teaching surgical technique to doctors there. I remember watching game shows like one where babys in walkers race through a maze but if they hit the sides their dad gets an electric shock. This video is so fun because I remember being told “there are 50 ways to offend before you even begin your meal.”

I also published with Japanese collegues the largest series of women ever undergoing repair of blocked tubes with tiny angioplasty catheters from the inside out. (Hey I needed a medgadget hook for the post). It was an honor to work with Professors Osada and Satoh from Nihon University School of Medicine in Tokyo.

Weird Batman-Caped Japanese Octopus: Sunday Fun Post 1

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

For all the DITM fans visiting here over the weekend, I wanted to give you a few fun posts. I have been having a lot of correspondence lately from researchers and technicians in Japan working on the concepts I write about (i’ll post the real Japanese medical technology posts next week). In a burst of research and link-exchange I was sent these strange clips.

First is a new species of octopus recently discovered that defends itself with a Batman Cape. As they write:

Most octopi squirt thick clouds of black ink to confuse predators. Tremoctopus, or blanket octopus (murasakidako in Japanese) when threatened, unfurls a giant sheet of webbing that trails behind like a cape. The webbing breaks apart rather easily when attacked — much like a lizard’s tail — and it gets wrapped around the predator’s face, giving the octopus a chance to flee.

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Future Vision in Surgery: Let the Podcasts Begin!

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

Here it is folks, docinthemachine’s first podcast to play on the site. This piece is near and dear to my heart. The Topic is “Future Vision” – and it’s about the coming radical transformation of surgery. I review how endoscopy allowed us to move from invasive to minimaly invasive surgery. What’s next? The transformation to microinvasive surgery (miniaturized robotic rovers inside the body) and non-invasive surgery (3D reconstructed diagnostic imaging and therapeutics via powerful computers).

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This podcast was an interiew I did at the 35th annual AAGL conference in Las Vegas. Coming soon I will post my keynote lecture on this topic with powerpoint and videos along with the entire plenary session on this topic featuring Dr. Chutkin (GI swallowable pill cams), Barish (radiology virtual imaging), and Andy Van Dam (yes the founder of sigggraph on virtual reality data manipulation).

you can read more of my ideas about the future of surgery including alternative visualization (seeing what the eye cannot) here

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did making them!