David Black

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Researcher at Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine

Purpose: This article investigates the current state of the art of the use of auditory display in image-guided medical interventions. Auditory display is a means of conveying information using sound, and we review the use of this approach to support navigated interventions. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of published systems and outline dire...

Purpose: During medical needle placement using image-guided navigation systems, the clinician must concentrate on a screen. To reduce the clinician's visual reliance on the screen, this work proposes an auditory feedback method as a stand-alone method or to support visual feedback for placing the navigated medical instrument, in this case a needle....

Background: An alternative mode of interaction with navigation systems for open liver surgery was requested. Surgeons who use such systems are impeded by having to constantly switch between viewing the navigation system screen and the patient during an operation. Methods: To this end, an auditory display system for open liver surgery is introduc...

Protoporphyrin (PpIX) fluorescence allows discrimination of tumor and normal brain tissue during neurosurgery. A hand-held fluorescence (HHF) probe can be used for spectroscopic measurement of 5-ALA-induced PpIX to enable objective detection compared to visual evaluation of fluorescence. However, current technology requires that the surgeon either...

The growing number of technical systems in the operating room has increased attention on developing touchless interaction methods for sterile conditions. However, touchless interaction paradigms lack the tactile feedback found in common input devices such as mice and keyboards. We propose a novel touchless eye- tracking interaction system with audi...

The identification of subsurface structures during resection wound repair is a challenge during minimally invasive partial nephrectomy. Specifically, major blood vessels and branches of the urinary collecting system need to be localized under time pressure as target or risk structures during suture placement. This work presents concepts for AR visu...

Informed by modern imaging techniques, current medical navigation systems support physicians during a variety of interventions, such as needle-based operations. During these, an abundance of information is often displayed on monitors placed in positions that are uncomfortable for the operator to view. In this article, we address these issues with t...

Instrument placement in intraoperative environments demands accurate estimation of distance between surgical tools and obstacles. In this work, AR visualization concepts were combined with real-time auditory display. A pilot study showed that enhancing AR visualization with auditory display provided qualitative and quantitative advantages but showe...

During stereotactic brain tumor biopsies, the detection of protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) fluorescence and microvascular perfusion using laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) with a handheld fiber optic probe allows the identification of tumor tissue while decreasing the risk of intracranial hemorrhage. Neurosurgeons performing this procedure usually view the me...

Tubular continuum robots can follow complex curvilinear paths to reach restricted areas within the body. Using teleoperation, these robots can help minimize incisions and reduce trauma. However, drawbacks include the lack of haptic feedback and a limited view of the situs, often due to camera occlusion. This work presents novel auditory display to...

This paper introduces an auditory display for short-range guidance tasks. It contains a psychoacoustically motivated sonification to map two orthogonal space dimensions to sound parameters that affect largely independent individual aspects of sound sensation. The sound parameters are frequency of chroma change and beating, and a controllable degree...

Objective: To design and validate a novel mixed reality head-mounted display for intraoperative surgical navigation. Design: A mixed reality navigation for laparoscopic surgery (MRNLS) system using a head mounted display (HMD) was developed to integrate the displays from a laparoscope, navigation system, and diagnostic imaging to provide context...

Background The availability of an increasing number of medical devices in the digital operating room (OR) has led to increased interaction demands of the surgical staff. To counteract the risk of bacterial contamination induced by device interactions, touchless interaction techniques are required. Support systems based on eye tracking enable intera...

Auditory displays have been suggested and partly established in the operating room, including audible alarms, anesthesia monitoring, and sounds for navigation. This work reviews them from a psychoacoustic perspective. Results show that only auditory displays that include some psychoacoustic considerations are successful. Guidelines for psychoacoust...

http://news.iscas.co/guiding-clinicians-sound-investigating-auditory-display-operating-room/ In image-guided medical procedures, information on a screen is often used to help the clinician complete a task involving the placement of a device in relation the planning data. This is often accomplished using 2d or 3d datasets. This can aid, for instanc...

Clinicians manually acquire sequences of 2D ultrasound images to evaluate the local situs in real-time. 3D volumes reconstructed from these sequences give clinicans a spatial overview of the area. Although 3D renderings are beneficial, drawbacks prohibit efficient interaction during acquisition. Current 2D image acquisition methods provide only one...

Free-hand gesture recognition technologies allow touchless interaction with a range of applications. However, touchless interaction concepts usually only provide primary, visual feedback on a screen. The lack of secondary tactile feedback, such as that of pressing a key or clicking a mouse, in interaction with free-hand gestures is one reason that...

A psychoacoustically motivated sonification design to guide clinicians in two-dimensional space is presented, e.g., to navigate a scalpel towards a target resection trajectory, ablation needle towards a pre-planned insertion point, or drill towards a target burrhole for craniotomy. Navigation is achieved by mapping spatial dimensions to audio synth...

Alongside Taiwanese media artist Yen Tzu Chang, Fraunhofer MEVIS scientists Sabrina Haase and Bianka Hofmann designed a creative workshop for pupils in the field of computer-assisted medicine and sound art within the STEAM Imaging artist-in-residency program. The program takes place at the Fraunhofer MEVIS Institute at the Technology Park in Bremen...

A psychoacoustically motivated sonification design is presented. It is intended to help surgeons navigate their scalpel to a target location in two-dimensional space. This is achieved by mapping spatial dimensions to audio parameters that affect the magnitude of different perceptual sound qualities. Distance and direction in the horizontal dimensi...

Image-guided interventions help clinicians navigate patient anatomy by providing information on a screen. However, recent developments have shown that navigation cues can also be delivered via so-called auditory displays in which instrument guidance or distance to risk structures are sonified instead of or in addition to visualization, so that clin...

In image-guided interventions, screens display information to help the clinician complete a task, such as placing an instrument or avoiding certain structures. Often, clinicians wish to access this information without having to switch views between the operating situs and the navigation screen. To reduce view switches and help clinicians concentrat...

The role of mixed reality that combines augmented and virtual reality in the healthcare industry, specifically in modern surgical interventions, has yet to be established. In laparoscopic surgeries, precision navigation with real-time feedback of distances from sensitive structures such as the pulmonary vessels is critical to preventing complicatio...

Purpose: Surgical navigation systems rely on a monitor placed in the operating room to relay information. Optimal monitor placement can be challenging in crowded rooms, and it is often not possible to place the monitor directly beside the situs. The operator must split attention between the navigation system and the situs. We present an approach f...

In image-guided navigated interventions, information is often placed on screens to aid the operator in coordinating the placement of a tool with a pre-interventional plan. However, such methods require an operator to repeatedly shift the view from a patient. Auditory display for navigation (e.g., during ablation needle placement, path following, vo...

3D image guidance systems help operators navigate an ablation probe towards a lesion inside a patient and view the placement of instruments relative to patient anatomy. However, such methods disconnect the patient from the operator, who must switch views between a computer screen and the patient. We propose an approach that harnesses the benefits o...

Image-guided surgery is daily business in many hospitals nowadays. Pre-operative data and navigation systems provide different views to the task at hand, but as they are displayed on monitors surgeons need to integrate several spatial frames of reference in order to map the displayed data to the patient, which is a demanding task. Qualitative spati...

Radiofrequency ablation is applied to treat a lesion using a needle inserted into the patient, which delivers local radiof-requency energy. Guided surgical methods allow surgeons to view the placement of the needle in relation to the patient to aid in guiding the tip of the needle to the target point. Unfortunately, such methods require that surgeo...

Radiofrequency ablation is a minimally invasive procedure used to treat a tumor by applying local radiofrequency energy using a needle that is inserted into the patient through the skin. Current methods for guiding needle placement require the radiologist to remove the view from the patient and instead use a computer screen for guidance. We present...

Image-guided surgery methods for liver resection are gaining popularity because they allows surgeons to view anatomical structures and planning data on a screen in the operating room as well as view the real- time position of a surgical instrument on a 3D model of the liver. However, the surgeon must frequently switch between viewing the patient an...

Sound designers and Foley artists have long struggled to create expressive soundscapes using standard editing software, devoting much time for the calibration of multiple sound samples and parameter adjustments. We present an intuitive approach that exploits the capabilities of off-theshelf motion-sensing input devices to enable quick and fluid int...

Today's large-size computer screens can display a wealth of information easily enough to overload the user's visual perceptual channel. Looking for a remedy for this effect, we research into providing additional acoustic cues through surround sound speakers mounted around the screen. In this paper, we demonstrate the results of user evaluations of...

The purpose of this work is to integrate concepts from the field of auditory display to enhance an electronic surgical navigation assistant for image-guided liver surgery. Although alarms and other auditory notification and monitoring devices are commonplace in operating rooms, audio has been a neglected modality in interaction with tools for intra...

The task of sound placement on video timelines is usually a time-consuming process that requires the sound design-er or foley artist to carefully calibrate the position and length of each sound sample. For novice and home video producers, friendlier and more entertaining input methods are needed. We demonstrate a novel approach that har-nesses the...

For decades, digital audio workstation software has displayed the content of audio tracks through bare waveforms. We argue that the same real estate on the computer screen can be used for far more expressive and goal-oriented visualizations. Starting from a range of requirements and use cases, this paper discusses existing techniques from such fiel...

Sound design applications are often hampered because the sound engineer must either produce new sounds using physical objects, or search through a database of sounds to find a suitable sample. We created a set of basic sounds to mimic these physical sound-producing objects, leveraging the mind's onomatopoetic clustering capabilities. These sounds,...

Input devices of the audio studio that formerly were physical have mostly been converted into virtual controls on the computer screen. Whereas this transition saves space and cost, it has reduced the performance of these controls, as virtual controls adjusted using the computer mouse do not exhibit the accuracy and accessibility of their physical c...

Similar to a movie's soundtrack, the music score of a computer game must provide an immersive and captivating experience to the user. Hence, the score needs to adapt and react to the gameplay in real time. Many software tools have been developed to support music composition for interactive computer applications such as games. The most advanced of t...

The fields of both mobile gaming and audio-only gaming have rapidly expanded in the last few years. In this work, we attempt to combine these two fields and present an immersive audio-only game prototype meant for future application in mobile gaming platforms. The game is based on the scenario of an open-air market, in which the player roams freely...