Roy Eagleson

The University of Western Ontario | UWO · Computer Engineering, Dept Surgery, and UWO Brain and Mind Institute

OBJECTIVE Some neonates born prematurely with intraventricular hemorrhage develop posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus and require lifelong treatment to divert the flow of CSF. Early prediction of the eventual need for a ventriculoperitoneal shunt (VPS) is difficult, and early discussions with families are based on statistics and the grade of hemorrhage....

Objective: To appraise blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal variability metrics uses in pediatric populations with a focus on evaluating their clinical applicability in pediatric neurological diseases. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted on five databases: Psychinfo, Healthstar, Medline, Embase, and Scopus. Inclusion...

Purpose Infantile hydrocephalus causes diffuse neuronal injury and periventricular white matter damage and is a common neurosurgical indication to limit adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Higher-order executive functions which develop throughout childhood and adolescence are not currently well characterized in surgically managed patients. Method...

Background Volumetric measurements of fetal brain maturation in the third trimester of pregnancy are key predictors of developmental outcomes. Improved understanding of fetal brain development trajectories may aid in identifying and clinically managing at-risk fetuses. Currently, fetal brain structures in magnetic resonance images (MRI) are often m...

Background: Greater variability of neuronal signalling, measured as the standard deviation of the blood oxygen dependent signal (BOLD SD ), relates to information processing capacity. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to determine differences in BOLD SD between children with and without epilepsy. Methods: We studied 24 co...

The relationship between age-related changes in brain structural connectivity (SC) and functional connectivity (FC) with cognition is not well understood. Furthermore, it is not clear whether cognition is represented via a similar spatial pattern of FC and SC or instead is mapped by distinct sets of distributed connectivity patterns. To this end, w...

Introduction: Infantile hydrocephalus is a condition in which there is an abnormal build-up of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles within the first few months of life, which puts pressure on surrounding brain tissues. Compression of the developing brain increases the risk of secondary brain injury and cognitive disabilities. Methods: In this s...

Template-based segmentation techniques have been used for targeting deep brain structures in fetal MR images. In this study, two registration algorithms were compared to determine the optimal strategy of segmenting subcortical structures in T2-weighted images acquired during the third trimester of pregnancy. Adult women with singleton pregnancies (...

As with any new surgical technique, robotic surgery in particular involves a significant training curve. Given sufficient training, surgeons can become adept at performing robotic procedures, entailing reduction of the associated costs and maximization of patient safety. In this chapter, we propose that augmented or virtual reality training systems...

Hand telerehabilitation currently has limitations for accurate and remote assessment of range of motion (ROM) in small finger joints. ‘DIGITS’ application utilises the front smartphone camera to measure finger ROM in a reliable and rapid assessment protocol. Our initial beta-phase testing examined the consistency of our software measurements to in-...

BACKGROUND Correct identification of the surgical tissue planes of dissection is paramount at the operating room, and the needed skills seem to be improved with realistic dynamic models rather than mere still images. The objective is to assess the role of adding video prequels to still images taken from operations on the precision and accuracy of t...

OBJECTIVE Epilepsy affects neural processing and often causes intra- or interhemispheric language reorganization, rendering localization solely based on anatomical landmarks (e.g., Broca’s area) unreliable. Preoperative brain mapping is necessary to weigh the risk of resection with the risk of postoperative deficit. However, the use of conventional...

Objective This study aimed to determine whether there are differences in the lateral ventricular volumes, measured by three-dimensional ultrasound (3D US) depending on the posture of the neonate (right and left lateral decubitus). Study Design This was a prospective analysis of the lateral ventricular volumes of preterm neonates recruited from Vict...

This study introduces a haptic rendering algorithm for simulating surgical bone machining operations. The algorithm is a new variant of the voxmap point-shell method, where the bone and surgical tool geometries are represented by voxels and points, respectively. The algorithm encompasses computationally efficient methods in a data-parallel framewor...

Background: Simulation-based medical education (SBME) is growing as a powerful aid in delivering proficient skills training in many specialties. Cerebral angiography (CA), a spatially and navigationally challenging endovascular procedure, can benefit from SBME by training targetable skills outside of the Angiosuite. In order to standardize and spe...

PurposeTraditional training for percutaneous renal access (PCA) relies on apprenticeship, which raises concerns about patient safety, limited training opportunities, and inconsistent quality of feedback. In this study, we proposed the development of a novel augmented reality (AR) simulator for ultrasound (US)-guided PCA and evaluated its validity a...

Objective The aim of this study is to investigate whether ventricular volume in posthemorrhagic ventricle dilatation impacts neurodevelopmental outcome. Infants were scanned with 3D cranial ultrasound in the first few months of life, and their neurodevelopmental outcome at 4, 8, 12, and 24 months corrected age (CA) was examined. Methods Forty-nine...

Software developers agree that software portability is a desirable attribute for their software quality. Software portability is mostly acquired by ad-hoc techniques when trying to port existing products. There is a lack of unified measuring approach of software portability in most computing platforms. This paper presents preliminary results of a s...

Background: Functional MRI (fMRI) is a noninvasive method to investigate the neural correlates of brain development. Insight into the rapidly developing brain in utero is limited, and fetal fMRI can be used to gain a greater understanding of the developmental process. Fetal brain fMRI is typically limited to resting-state fMRI due to the difficult...

Background and objectives: Virtual reality surgery simulators have been proved effective for training in several surgical disciplines. Nevertheless, this technology is presently underutilized in orthopaedics, especially for bone machining procedures, due to the limited realism in haptic simulation of bone interactions. Collision detection is an in...

The time course of neuroanatomical structural and functional measures across the lifespan is commonly reported in association with aging. Blood oxygen-level dependent signal variability, estimated using the standard deviation of the signal, or “BOLDSD,” is an emerging metric of variability in neural processing, and has been shown to be positively c...

Advances in mobile technology have enabled virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems to become more accessible and affordable. There are several devices that can be integrated with the mobile platform to make the applications more interactive, such as Leap Motion (LM). In this article, an AR environment has been designed that uses an...

R1 Simulation training in stroke thrombolysis: reducing door to needle times to less than 15 minutes R2 Sequential Simulation (SqS): an empirical and theoretical model R3 Debriefing with team deliberate practice: an instructional design to enhance the performance of undergraduate nursing students in recognising the deteriorating patient R4 Behavior...

As the open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems, OpenCL has been used in this study in the context of a particular and intensive computing task, namely the voxelization of tessellated objects. For this purpose, OpenCL platform has been utilized to develop a parallelized voxelization algorithm that relies on a fast and efficie...

Background With the increasing implementation of web-based, mobile health interventions in clinical trials, it is crucial for researchers to address the security and privacy concerns of patient information according to high ethical standards. The full process of meeting these standards is often made more complicated due to the use of internet-based...

As the interaction between clinicians and computational processes increases in complexity, more nuanced mechanisms are required to describe how their communication is mediated. Medical image segmentation in particular affords a large number of distinct loci for interaction which can act on a deep, knowledge-driven level which complicates the naive...

There are a number of challenges that must be faced when trying to develop AR and VR-based Neurosurgical simulators, Surgical Navigation Platforms, and "Smart OR" systems. Trying to simulate an operating room environment and surgical tasks in Augmented and Virtual Reality is a challenge many are attempting to solve, in order to train surgeons or he...

Non-invasive assessment of cognitive importance has been a major challenge for planning of neurosurgical procedures. In the past decade, in vivo brain imaging modalities have been considered for estimating the ‘eloquence’ of brain areas. In order to estimate the impact of damage caused by an access path towards a target region inside of the skull,...

Advances in virtual and augmented reality (AR) are having an impact on the medical field in areas such as surgical simulation. Improvements to surgical simulation will provide students and residents with additional training and evaluation methods. This is particularly important for procedures such as the endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV), whic...

Neurosurgical interventions require preoperative planning and precise navigation and manipulation of medical instruments since the workspace involves healthy brain tissues and eloquent brain structures. Computer-assisted surgery research is gaining more interest in medical disciplines such as neurosurgery. Visualization and rendering of three-dimen...

Background: Construction of brain functional and structural networks by neuroimaging methods facilitates inter-modal studies. These type of studies often demand exploration tools to carry out functional-structural discoveries and answer questions regarding the anatomical basis of brain networks. New method: This paper describes the design and de...

Neurosurgical procedures are complicated pro- cesses, providing challenges and demands ranging from medical knowledge and judgment to the neurosurgeon's dexterity and perceptual capacities. Deliberate training of common neurosurgical procedures and underlying tasks is extremely important. One effective method of the training is to enhance the requi...

The ability to minimize damage to healthy tissues and eloquent brain structures when navigating toward a specific target is a priority in any neurosurgery. The aim of the work is to objectively evaluate fourteen novice participants during their neurosurgical targeting tasks with a variety of targets settings and to investigate the participants’ per...

Numerous augmented reality image guidance tools have been evaluated under specific clinical criteria, but there is a lack of investigation into the broad effect on targeting ability and perception. In this paper, we evaluated performance of 18 subjects on a targeting task modeling ventriculostomy trajectory planning. Users targeted ellipsoids withi...

Online educational technologies and e-learning tools are providing new opportunities for students to learn worldwide, and they continue to play an important role in anatomical sciences education. Yet, as we shift to teaching online, particularly within the anatomical sciences, it has become apparent that e-learning tool success is based on more tha...

Neuroanatomy is a challenging subject, with novice medical students often experiencing difficulty grasping the intricate 3D spatial relationships. Most of the anatomical teaching in undergraduate medicine utilizes conventional 2D resources. E-learning technologies facilitate the development of learner-centered educational tools that can be tailored...

Neuroanatomy is one of the most challenging subjects in anatomy, and novice students often experience difficulty grasping the complex three-dimensional (3D) spatial relationships. This study evaluated a 3D neuroanatomy e-learning module, as well as the relationship between spatial abilities and students' knowledge in neuroanatomy. The study's cross...

Simulators often implement their own solution for aggregating and saving user performance data. Aggregating user performance data from simulators that execute on many different machines can be a pain for researchers and the data is often saved in one format that can be hard to translate to others. A framework is proposed to provide re-usable scenar...

Simulation of anatomically complex procedures, such as angiography, is becoming more practical, however, computer-based modules require extensive research to assess their effectiveness. We organized two training schemas - alternating cases and consistent cases - and hypothesized that the alternating practice cases would be beneficial to test perfor...

This paper describes a simulation framework for a clinical application involving skull-brain co-development in infants, leading to a platform for craniosynostosis modeling. Craniosynostosis occurs when one or more sutures are fused early in life, resulting in an abnormal skull shape. Surgery is required to reopen the suture and reduce intracranial...

As one of the most commonly performed neurosurgical procedures, ventriculostomy training simulators are becoming increasingly familiar features in research institutes and teaching facilities. Despite their widespread implementations and adoption, simulators to date have not fully explored the landscape of performance metrics that reflect surgical p...

Fluctuation of performance in young and older adults is linked to weaker functional connectivity in the default mode network Aging is characterized by increased intraindividual variability (IIV), which may be linked to disruption in functional connectivity (FC) (Castellanos et al., 2008). The goal of this study was to investigate age-related differ...

Great saphenous vein and short saphenous veins are the superficial veins of the lower limb. Variations in the superficial veins of the lowerlimb are uncommon. Our case report discusses anomalous course and its abnormal termination of short/small saphenous vein. During a routine dissection with 80 cadavers, an abnormal short saphenous vein was obser...

The primary purpose of medical image visualization is to improve patient outcomes by facilitating the inspection, analysis, and interpretation of patient data. This is only possible if the users’ perceptual and cognitive limitations are taken into account during every step of design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive displays. Visualiza...

The design and evaluation of Neurosurgical simulators has heretofore emphasized the training of 'surgical technical skills'. Such commercial platforms generally exercise tool use and other low level sensori-motor tasks such as targeting and navigation for training surgical residents. We report on the development of a set of modules implemented with...

The design and evaluation of Neurosurgical simulators has heretofore emphasized the training of 'surgical technical skills'. Such commercial platforms generally exercise tool use and other low level sensori-motor tasks such as targeting and navigation for training surgical residents. We report on the development of a set of modules implemented with...

The Healthcare services providers and medical schools have only recently recognized the potential of simulation as a training tool, focusing primarily on realistic standardized-patient simulations (for problem solving and decision-making skills) and task trainers and immersive simulations (for surgical skills). We are making use of Game Engine tool...

We present a unique simulator-based methodology for assessing both technical and non-technical (cognitive) skills for surgical trainees while immersed in a complete medical simulation environment. Further, we have included two crisis scenarios which allow for the evaluation of the effect of cognitive strategy selection on the low-level surgical ski...

Planning surgical interventions is a complex task, demanding a high degree of perceptual, cognitive, and sensorimotor skills to reduce intra- and postoperative complications. This process requires spatial reasoning to coordinate between the preoperatively acquired medical images and patient reference frames. In the case of neurosurgical interventio...

Background / Purpose: The present study aimed at exploring the relationship between behavioral intraindividual variability IIV, and functional connectivity (FC). We then examined if there was a similar pattern emerging in structural connectivity, or in variability of the brain signal. Main conclusion: Consistent with previous studies, older ad...

There has been an increase in the use of immersive 3D virtual environments and serious games, that is, video games that are used for educational purposes, and only recently serious games have been considered for healthcare training. For example, there are a number of commercial surgical simulators which offer great potential for the training of bas...

Graphically realistic, haptics-enabled, virtual reality surgical simulations are becoming increasingly popular training tools for neurosurgical procedures and surgical skills. Compared with traditional training models, virtual simulations are safe, versatile, consistent, and are relatively cost effective. Most simulations are deficient, however, in...

Image guidance can provide surgeons with valuable contextual information during a medical intervention. Often, image guidance systems require considerable infrastructure, setup-time, and operator experience to be utilized. Certain procedures performed at bedside are susceptible to navigational errors that can lead to complications. We present an ap...

Computer-based simulation is increasingly used in medical education for training, assessment, credentialing, and practice. Compared to medical specialties such as anesthesiology and general surgery, the adoption of simulation for neurointerventional training has been slow. This may be due to the limited number of neurointerventional simulators avai...

This paper describes the design and development of a software tool for the evaluation and training of surgical residents using an interactive, immersive, virtual environment. Our objective was to develop a tool to evaluate user spatial reasoning skills and knowledge in a neuroanatomical context, as well as to augment their performance through inter...