Federico Menozzi - “Virtual Presence for Medical Procedures”

This talk was given by undergraduate Federico Menozzi during the 10th Annual Computer Science Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2016. Federico‘s research was supervised by Dr. Henry Fuchs.

“Virtual Presence for Medical Procedures”

As medical training becomes more and more complex, with students being expected to learn increasingly specialized and sophisticated procedures, the current practice of having students physically observe all procedures is becoming increasingly difficult. Some procedures are exceedingly rare, while others may rely on specialized equipment not available to the student’s institution. Additionally, some procedures can be fast-paced, and critical details might be overlooked in such a hectic environment. We present an application solution that records the procedure with multiple cameras, reconstructs the 3D environment and people frame-by-frame, then utilizes virtual reality to allow the student to walk through the reconstruction of the procedure through time. We also include several post-reconstruction enhancements, such as video playback controls, scene annotations, and introducing new 3D models into the environment. While presented in the context of medical training, our system is applicable in a wide variety of training scenarios.

Federico Menozzi is a senior computer science major. He will be heading to Google’s Franklin Street office this summer to work on Skia, Google’s 2D graphics engine used in Chrome and Android, before returning to UNC in the fall to complete a master’s degree as part of UNC’s combined B.S./M.S. program. His interests mainly revolve around the field of computer graphics and its applications.