Microsoft Kinect Sensor applications in health and medicine

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Rarely on HealthBlog do I share something that I haven’t written myself. However, from time to time I come across something from my colleagues at Microsoft that warrants breaking my first-person reporting rule. As I travel the world in my role as senior director for worldwide health at Microsoft, I probably see as much excitement about our Kinect sensor and the many ways researchers and clinicians are using the device in health and medicine than anything else we do. That’s why I’m sharing this excellent summary article from the Microsoft Research Connections Team. 

Bill Crounse, MD Senior Director, Worldwide Health Microsoft

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In keeping with the January ritual of reflecting on the past year’s accomplishments, we’re eager to tell you about a very special event that Microsoft Research Cambridge hosted in November: the Body Tracking in Healthcare workshop. This occasion celebrated the completion of a two-year collaboration between Microsoft Research Cambridge and Lancaster University, during which we explored the use of touchless interactions in surgical settings, allowing images to be viewed, controlled, and manipulated without physical contact via the Kinect for Windows sensor.

Surgeons use Kinect for Windows-based system to view and manipulate X-rays and scans without physical contact.
Surgeons use Kinect for Windows-based system to view and manipulate X-rays and scans without physical contact.

The Kinect for Windows-based system, which has been widely covered in the popular press, enables surgeons to navigate through and manipulate X-rays and scans during operations, literally with a wave of the hands, without touching the non-sterile surface of a mouse or keyboard. It’s a prime example of the burgeoning field of natural user interface (NUI), which promises to change our relationship with today’s ubiquitous devices.

The workshop brought together experts from academia and industry to discuss the use of Kinect for Windows in medicine—in applications that extend well beyond the operating room. Kinect’s body tracking abilities are already being harnessed for clinical assessments of, for example, children with motor disabilities. One talk at the workshop demonstrated a system in which youngsters with cerebral palsy play simple computer games while Kinect for Windows monitors their movements, providing data that physicians can use to assess the state of the disease.

Other researchers are exploring ways to use Kinect for Windows to evaluate the damage caused by strokes and to create and monitor game-based rehabilitation exercises, many of which can be performed by stroke patients in their own homes. Still other presentations showed how Kinect can assist in diagnosing disorders of the brain and nervous system, including Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. We even saw how the Kinect camera and motion sensors can be utilized to compensate for patient movement during medical imaging—a boon to anyone who’s had to undergo repeat X-rays because he or she breathed during the first imaging.

We hope to publish a comprehensive report on the projects shown at the workshop, either via a special issue of a journal or in a book. Meanwhile, a cover story in the January 2014 issue of Communications of the ACM features some of this work.

—Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche, Senior Research Program Manager, Microsoft Research Connections EMEA; Stewart Tansley, Director, Microsoft Research Connections;Abigail Sellen, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Kenton O’Hara, Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge

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NUI, Stewart Tansley, healthcare, medicine, Microsoft Research Cambridge, Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche, Kinect, natural user interface, Kinect for Windows SDK, Kinect for Windows, Microsoft Research Connections EMEA, Kinect sensor, Lancaster University, sensor, Body Tracking in Healthcare, Abigail Sellen, Kenton O’Hara, X-rays, touch-free