A Microsoft (MSFT) scientist has developed a search engine for the human body according to MIT’s Technology Review. Antonio Criminisi at the Microsoft Research Cambridge campus in Great Britain has developed a search engine to browse through a patient’s anatomy to easily find organs to help in diagnosis.
The research created a way for doctors to search the three-dimensional images produced by MRI scans, which are often tricky to view specific areas. Mr. Criminisi told Technology Review “It is very difficult even for someone very trained to get to the place they need to be to examine the source of a problem.”
The search engine creates an index of the human body which allows the user to search a specific body part by detecting patterns of light and dark within the scan itself. According to the article, the search engine will make it possible to display the necessary results in seconds to compare scans to see how it has changed, offering a quicker way to detect changes in a problematic area.
The MSFT team is also investigating different ways to interact with the search engine. The researchers are looking into voice recognition and using Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect controller. Technology Review says that the use of the Kinect device could mean that surgeons will be able to consult a patient’s scan images mid-surgery without compromising their sterile gloves by touching a keyboard, mouse, or screen.
Kenji Suzuki, at the University of Chicago, told Technology Review, that if the search engine does offer a user-friendly way of searching then it could drastically improve patient care, “As medical imaging has advanced, so many images are produced that there is a kind of information overload. The workload has grown a lot,” he said.
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Imagine if this were online, the search providers could data-mine your online persona, but also your physical being. I don’t think it is too far of a reach for the search engine firm to mine scans online and sell the info to some huge pharma firm so they can target scripts to people online. But hey that would be OK since it would not be evil.
What do you think?
Would you trust your health to the folks from Redmond?
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.