Immersive technology for medical science

The e-KLESF webinar titled “Immersive Technology for Medical Science” was held on 19 August 2022 via Zoom Platform and Facebook Live.

The webinar, organised by UTAR Centre for Immersive Technology and Creativity (CITC), aimed to expose the audience to the current and future development of immersive technology and its potential in the fields of medical science.

Invited to speak were three undergraduate students from UTAR Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science (LKC FES), namely Mechatronics Engineering students Tan Xuan Qing and Poy Yi Ler, and Electrical and Electronic Engineering student Lew Yanzhe. The webinar was moderated by CITC Chairperson Dr Aloysius Yapp.

Tan started the webinar by asking— “Have you experienced failed insertion of needle injection before?”. According to him, their motivation to conduct the research started because they found that five out of 10 people suffered from venipuncture failure due to inexperienced medical students. “This is because medical students lack venipuncture skills and they need more time to master this skill,” he said.

He also mentioned that many medical practitioners were flooded with a lot of patients during the pandemic period. “There was a 20% turnover rate in the global medical industry. This was because the new practitioners were unable to fill the gap when the experienced practitioners left. This led to the increase of workload as well as burnout occurrence.”

Poy continued the session by introducing the vein finder. He said the vein finder uses technology such as Near Infrared Light (NIR) Technique and Transillumination Technique to locate the vein.

Poy sharing how NIR works

The technology used in vein finder

 

Tan sharing their project

During the webinar, they educated the audience on the importance of using immersive technology in medical science. They also shared problem statements; companies that developed vein finders; market solutions; Near Infrared Light (NIR) techniques; materials; different ways to check veins (the pros and cons); the development of Mixed Reality Injection Simulation Devices and many more.

The materials used to create vein finder

Injection using augmented reality

They concluded by emphasising the importance of immersive technology in medical science. Tan said, “We use the NIR approach to visualise the veins, the AR approach to find the veins, and we planned to use MR venipuncture training device for future improvement.” They also explained that they wished to improvise the image from projecting 2D images to a 3D vein model overlaid on the prosthetic arm.

The talk concluded with an extensive yet insightful Q&A session, followed by a photo session.

Group photo