boards, measuring 42 x 42mm, and used them as a prototype. Once they had proved the product’s capabilities, they felt that is was a better option to take our circuitry and add it directly onto their circuit card. This ensures a very tight integration between their product and our technology, which is provided to them under licence.’ From a software perspective, Dexela’s OEM customers write their own programs according to the needs of the specific instrument and application they are building, and for this, they use the flexibility of Pleora’s eBus SDK. This SDK allows Dexela’s digital x-ray panels to be remotely configured and controlled, and for the images to be acquired. Pleora also works with a number of other suppliers of x-ray detector panels. ‘We have some customers who integrate the technology into larger systems,’ continues Phillips. ‘They’ll use our SDK to import the images, but then analyse or manipulate them in some way, and use our technology to send the adjusted images back out over the network to one or more workstations.’ Phillips sees the potential for customers
in this market to look beyond the current 1 GigE bandwidth to 10 GigE. ‘For example, in fluoroscopy, there is a requirement for continuous video,’ says Phillips. ‘This creates a requirement for a much higher data rate, so we have customers interested in our upcoming 10 GigE solution, again based on the GigE Vision protocol. The SDK will remain the same, so our existing customers will be able to migrate from 1 GigE to 10 GigE seamlessly.’
Ophthalmology training VRmagic, based in Mannheim, Germany, provides training simulators for ophthalmology, based on its expertise in developing software and hardware for virtual reality applications, using vision technology. VRmagic’s Eyesi eye operation simulator enables prospective eye surgeons to train for operations with no risk to patients. It simulates all human pathologies – including rare conditions – and the complexity of the procedure can be adjusted according to the individual’s abilities. When using the simulator, the surgeon sits in
the normal position at an operation microscope and guides freely movable operation instruments into the mechanical eye of a model head. Inside the model head is an optical tracking system that follows the movements of the instruments and transmits their position, alignment and orientation to a computer. The behaviour of fluids and tissue when touched by the instruments is simulated in real time. The operator sees the simulation in the microscope’s displays instead of a real image, with a time delay in visual reproduction of less than the human perception threshold of 50 to 100 milliseconds. Optical tracking inside the patient’s model
head is carried out by means of colour markers: both the pivoted mechanical model eye and the tips of the operation instruments are marked by colours. This means that both the position
‘We have customers interested in our upcoming 10 GigE solution’
and the alignment of the eye and instruments can be determined. For the camera system, VRmagic uses a multi-sensor FPGA camera with four offset global shutter sensors, which supply pixel-synchronous images. Following parallel pre-processing of the image data on the camera’s FPGA, the loss-free compressed data stream can be transmitted via a single USB cable to the computer where the data stream is evaluated further. Blob segmentation provides the 2D coordinates for every colour marker, so that the precise location and alignment of the model eye and instruments can be reconstructed in three dimensions. Based on the measured 3D data, the biomechanical simulation algorithms developed for Eyesi can calculate in real time the way in which tissue behaves when it collides with instruments. The simulated image of the eye’s interior is displayed for both the left and right eye on an OLED microdisplay in the simulator’s stereo microscope. The operator therefore obtains the usual stereoscopic image impression. The
Medical discoVery Tour aT Vision
At the Vision show in Stuttgart, several companies will be participating in a new feature called the Medical Discovery Tour, aimed at visitors from the medical device industry interested in machine vision applications. A
special guided tour will lead visitors through the exhibition highlighting products and applications, while several presentations during the Industrial Vision Days talks will also link into the medical theme.
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