Active Telemedicine

 

 

This proposal to use Active Vision to support telemedicine documents was my initial foray into medical imaging applications. The point of view is clearly dominated by technology (as befits the perspective from a robotics laboratory). Looking back, what is more concerning, though, is the lack of clinical diagnostic and workflow considerations. While the need for a full 3D telepresence reconstruction might not currently (or ever) be demonstrable, the capabilities of such resources as Active Vision and Computational Photography raised in this chapter open the door to a range of assistive diagnostic utilities. There is no telling what future gaming and communications technologies might become common and affordable in the marketplace of the future. Given what today often amounts to no more than medical teleconferencing when attempting to project clinical assistance over a distance, the new technologies might be capable of providing wholly unanticipated functionalities.

 

The doctrine that there’s not much new under the sun receives considerable support from this magazine cover published three and a half years before Philo Farnsworth performed the initial test of his image dissector camera and produced the first successful transmission of television signals.