Teaching anatomy with Microsoft Kinect

Kinect, Microsoft’s popular motion-sensing accessory, has found yet another use outside the gaming arena, this time as a tool for teaching anatomy.

 

The latest hack projects a CT image onto the user’s reflection to give the illusion of seeing inside one’s own body, tech site CNET reported.

 

“While the end result is a little crude - for instance, it uses someone else’s CT image instead of the subject’s own - the Mirracle system certainly enables more user interaction and visualization. Those are two big perks for studying anatomy,” it said.

 

A team from the Technical University of Munich in Germany has been working on the Mirracle system, where Kinect is used to estimate the position of a person in front of an augmented-reality mirror to create the illusion that the user can see inside his or her own body.

 

CNET said researchers Tobias Blum and Nassir Navab have installed a prototype of their Mirracle system in the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam in September 2011.

 

Under the system, the Kinect provides tracking while software from OpenNI and PrimeSense NITE project the skeleton of a person onto the subject in front of the mirror.

 

The Kinect is placed next to the screen so the person standing in front of the Mirracle system can interact with the screen.

 

A person can use touch-screen gestures without having to actually touch anything. — TJD, GMA News