What's in the Future for Augmented Reality
When I began this project in February, almost no one I knew had ever heard of "augmented reality". It's appearance in the 2010 Horizon Report, as a technology that would be mainstream in 3-4 years, didn't seem possible to most people, because they associated it with the high-end and complicated uses in movies and television. But it should be clear from this web site that AR is rapidly becoming a ubiquitious technology. The uses have already out-paced the sophistication of current technologies, but they are rapidly catching up.
As you explore this page, think about what the future might be like with AR. Will we find the quote above to be true? And, do you think we will lose all sense of privacy, or do you think we will develop ways to guard our privacy? And, if we chose to guard our privacy, will others wonder what we have to hide? Please leave your thoughts in our guest register below.
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Augmented Reality in Medicine
Some of the most important uses will be for medical training and procedures. For example: researchers in brain plasticity, like V.S. Ramachandran, have shown that the brain can be trained to overcome the pain of phantom limbs, a phenomena that often occurs after an amputation. Current treatments require complication mirror boxes that fool the brain into thinking that a reflected image of a body part, is the missing part, allowing the missing (phantom) limb to eventually disappear. (Doidge, 2007) Creating the same experience using augmented reality is currently being tested with very promising results. (O'Neill, dePaor, MacLachlan, & McDarby)
Operating rooms and procedures are another place that AR will change. Current techniques are being developed and used that overlay a patient with MRI, CTscan or ultrasonic imaging. "The vision of the operating room of the future is based upon the fundamental concept of merging these exciting new technologies into a high technology environment in which both surgery and interventional radiology can be performed with image guidance" (Jolesz,M.D,) The technologies that will make this possible are advancing rapidly, and in order for them to be fully utitlized they will need to be extremely accurate, avoiding any misalignment. (Harders et al, 2007). Research in the field continues to advance and the accuracy is becoming nearly perfect. (Liao, Inomata, Sakuma, & Dolhi, 2010)
Doidge, MD, N. (2007). The Brain that changes itself. London: Penquin Books.
(Doidge, MD, 2007)
Jolesz, M.D, F.A. (accessed: 2010, April 16). Image guided procedures and the operating room of the future. Retrieved from http://www.spl.harvard.edu/archive/spl-pre2007/pages/papers/horizon/horizon.html
Harders, M, Bianchi, G, & Knoerlein, B. (2007). Multimodal augmented reality in medicine. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 4th international conference on universal access in human-computer interaction, http://portal.acm.org/ ISBN ~ ISSN:0302-9743 , 978-3-540-73280-8 .
Liao, H, Inomata, T, Sakuma, I, & Dolhi, T. (2010). Three-dimensional augmented reality for mri-guided surgery using integral videography austostereoscopic-image overlay. IEEE Transactions of Biomedical Engineering, PP(99), 1-1.
O'Neill, K, dePaor, A, MacLachlan, M, & McDarby, G. (n.d.). An Investigation into the performance of augmented reality for use in the treatment of phantom limb pain in amputees. Mindgames.org, Retrieved from http://medialabeurope.org/mindgames/publications/publicationsAugmentedReality.pdf