EMBC08 and Virtual Rehab08 are held at Vancouver in August. I went to both conferences to have free peek and took some notes. Mainly in the fields I am interested in: wireless, human-computer interaction and human factors for personal systems.
EMBC08：
- There are not much new in wireless-enabled practices. Most popular radio interfaces are still Bluetooth and WiFi. One UK hospital showed some work using HSPA+ for ambulance-ER communication. Another group from Europe (IMEC) showed miniaturized wireless EEG patch using TI MSP430 processor and a 2.4 GHz transceiver using Nordic RF2401 chip (same one in the Apple-Nike shoe sensor). The transceiver is utilized to transfer one-channel simulated EEG data, albeit as claimed it is capable of 8-channel transmission at 100Hz data sampling rate.
Virtual Rehab08:
- The tutorial "using Nitendo Wii for rehabilitation" is interesting. The speaker gives an anatomy introduction of the Wii and related products, as well as some recent practice in a large rehabilitation center. One PT reported an observation that when stroke patients are trained in VE, they tend to use cheating to achieve higher scores to avoid frustration. A possible solution is to set personalized game difficulties to encourage patients' active participation.
- Greg Burdea raised two issues that need attention: 1. Besides exploring the potential benefits of virtual rehabilitation, are their side effects also clearly identified and monitored? All the PTs, when asked if patients' heart rate and blood pressure were examined before and after the training sessions, gave the answer "no". 2. Pervasive bio-signal monitoring , such as using wearable sensors together with a home wireless gateway connected to medical centers is important in ensuring the safety and good transfer of VE-based training sessions. The latter issue really enlightens my thoughts.
- Emily Keshner's keynote reviewed her endeavors of integrating VR into physiological research. My summary of her points: VR is first useful in investigate the mechanisms of the human body and as a further step, these findings can be used to design rehabilitation utilities.
- Assarf Dvorkin use poser to draw human figure superimposed on a Matlab 3D plot, this data visualization is very intuitive in describing experiment settings.
About Me
- Xun Luo
- Xun Luo is originally from Langzhong (a small town in Sichuan province), China. He is currently a personal computing researcher at Qualcomm, Inc. During 2006-2008, he was a senior researcher at Motorola Labs. Xun holds a Ph.D. in computer science and a M.Sc. in Mathematics, both from the University of Illinois at Chicago.