Medical Image Analysis-The Wave of Future Diagnosis

Three dimensional images are quite popular to obstetrics. Expecting parents look forward to 3-D and 4-D images of fetuses moving and growing in womb. While this pleasure gives purpose to medical imaging, diagnosis and treatment is ultimately the purpose of medical image analysis. Microsoft Research Cambridge is developing the next wave of medical image analysis tools that take clinicians and radiologists into a whole new world of dissection, localization, automation and segmentation.

The Medical Image Analysis software being developed by Microsoft Research Cambridge is aimed at making diagnosis and treatment hands on from afar. Automatic detection will pick out known organs and color code them. When images are color coded, measurements are much easier to take allowing for more accurate diagnostic results. While automatic detection and localization is an exciting advancement, it is the segmentation that truly pushes current scan results and effectiveness to the stone ages.

With segmentation, radiologists and clinicians can pin point a specific area to scan and rotate the image to view from all sides and angles. The images are three dimensional and can be moved on an axis as if the clinician were walking around a suspended image or handling a three dimensional rendering of the scan. Microsoft Research Cambridge is working in conjunction with Microsoft Amalga. Microsoft Amalga specialized in health care technology that makes information easier to access and share between healthcare providers, researchers and hospitals.

Where Will Medical Image Analysis Lead?

The future possibilities with Medical Image Analysis software include integration with medical robotics. When the system is perfected, robots will be guided by the images providing support for clinicians or simulate medical interventions for teaching purposes, medical planning and geometric reasoning. Pre-operative images could essentially give a surgeon time to study the specific area to be addressed during surgery and surrounding anatomical structures.