Epson Toyocom develops tiny 6-axis sensor for motion tracking

By Alan Brandon

The Epson Toyocom AH-6100LR is a six-axis quartz MEMS motion sensor

4D heart imaging could have far-reaching effects for patients

By Tannith Cattermole

4D images show blood flow, direction and velocity and are markedly different in healthy volunteers when compared to patients with heart problems (Image: University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health)

Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S, and congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect around the world. About five million people in the U.S. have heart failure, and it kills 300,000 people a year. Current lengthy MRI heart imaging technology has led to long waiting lists but remarkable new imaging technology can not only show the heart in 3D showing blood flow, direction, and velocity but can also show them relating to a fourth dimension - time. The procedure is fast, and requires no invasive procedures, no contrast agent or general anesthesia and could have significant consequences for patients at risk of cardiac problems.

Until now physicians have measured blood velocity with MRIs that require a patient to be completely still for up to 90 minutes in order to capture the 20 to 30 slices needed to scan the entire heart. Ultrasound is also sometimes used but other anatomy can make it difficult to see some areas of the heart. Furthermore the images from both are typically 2D, though sometimes 3D.

With the new technology the MRI scan takes only ten minutes, and while wriggly children might need to be sedated patients don't need to be absolutely still for long periods. From a short procedure scientists can produce remarkable images to measure how fast blood is flowing through various places in the heart and the major arteries around it. Blood flowing through the heart is seen as a bundle of long filaments color-coded to indicate the speed of the flow at various locations in the heart. Blue threads represent a relaxed heart with relatively slow flow such as when sleeping or at rest, while green threads indicate blood flowing faster during contraction. Red and yellow threads show abnormally fast blood flow in patients with heart problems.

In addition to this, direction of blood is depicted and the effect of any obstructions or deviations on blood flow. Scientists hope that the new technology could be adapted to analyze blood vessel walls as well by identifying weak areas or areas under increased stress that could lead to aneurysms or build-up of damaging plaque. This would have far-reaching effects for any patients with heart defects or at risk of cardiac problems.

The new imaging technology, developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) is known as Phase Contrast Vastly undersampled Isotropic Projection Reconstruction (PC VIPR). Dr. Oliver Wieben, a School of Medicine and Public Health medical physicist who has been working on the technology for several years, and Dr. Christopher Francois, a radiologist at the medical school who specializes in heart imaging have demonstrated their technology on hundreds of volunteers and patients, and the images have created a stir among amazed physicians and peers.

"In designing this, we threw out all the old rules of radiology and came up with a new way to acquire data that allows us to do the imaging much faster while still getting excellent quality," Wieben says. "We're also developing new ways to display the complex flow data on a 2-D monitor."

"This is a new paradigm in cardiac imaging," says Francois. "It will allow physicians to see things they haven't seen before in all their complexity."

This new development could soon have significant implications for those people born with heart defects or at risk of heart problems if it is available in hospitals in only three or four years from now.

Other similar research into 4D brain imaging has been positive but is still in study phase.

Disney to shut ImageMovers Digital studio

Robert Zemeckis' Bay Area studio has 450 employees and will close by January. It produces the motion-capture animation technology that was used in 2009's 'A Christmas Carol.'

"Given today's economic realities, we need to find alternative ways to bring creative content to audiences, and IMD no longer fits into our business model," Disney Studios President Alan Bergman said.

Disney Studios has been aggressively cutting costs by consolidating operations, slashing overhead and reining in production and marketing budgets.

"A Christmas Carol" cost the studio hundreds of millions of dollars to make and promote. The motion-capture technology Zemeckis used appeared outdated in the wake of James Cameron's "Avatar," which employed a more advanced technique. The movie generated $324 million in ticket sales worldwide.

ImageMovers is completing production on "Mars Needs Moms," which Disney plans to release in March 2011. Zemeckis is also developing a 3-D adaptation of the 1968 animated Beatles film "Yellow Submarine."

Disney said the studio was "hoping to create a long-term production deal" with Zemeckis and his IMD partners, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey, which would include the development of "Yellow Submarine."

Disney has been in partnership with Zemeckis for the last four years. The studio and filmmaker have had an association since 1988 when Zemeckis directed the groundbreaking hit "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Tiny Sensor Listens For Gunshots, Identifying The Gun and Location

This is the gear that gets our troops excited. Microflown Technologies' tiny sensor listens for the sounds of war by measuring particles in the air. Then it reports what weapon made the sound and where that sound originated.

The sensor uses a technology, developed by Microflown, called acoustic vector sensing. AVS heats two 200-nanometer wide platinum strips to 200 degrees Celsius and measures how passing air particles cool them down. From those cooling patterns, Microflown's proprietary software can determine not only what the sound is but also where it came from.

There are other technologies that can do the same type of thing, but they all have their own unique disadvantages: radar-based solutions are traceable; others require the deployment of large apparatuses, and some need multiple sensors to triangulate sounds.

Microflown's matchstick almost seems too good to be true, but several nations' armies—including the Netherlands, Germany, India, Poland, and Australia—are currently testing out the tech and seeing what they hear. [DVICE]

All that headgear and other motion-capture hardware that went into making SAG members into believable N’avi just wasn’t doing the trick for the old timers. Despite those early images of Zoe Saldana getting her wail on and all of Jim Cameron and producer Jon Landau’s calming pledges to the contrary, the veteran actors are convinced it’s a threat. And to paraphrase a rally cry popular with their fellow extremists in the gun lobby, they’re Academy members, and they vote:

The consensus I had drawn in recent weeks from talking to academy members of other branches strongly pointed to Avatar winning, but with few exceptions, most of the actors I asked thought the movie’s advanced “performance capture” technique was threatening their career future. I remember sitting next to JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist) at a Lovely Bones lunch event in December, and she said she worried it had the potential to eventually put actors out of work. Heavily involved with the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, she said then that SAG was forming a committee to investigate the process.

Some of them made remarks like 'There really weren't any actors IN Avatar', which shows just how uneducated people are on the subject.

Aside from sensing a heavy Hurt Locker vibe in the room, many, while acknowledging the technical prowess of the film, didn’t believe Avatar was their sort of film, at least when it comes to Academy Awards.

“I confess I didn’t see Avatar. It’s not really an actor’s kind of movie is it?” said 1987 best actress nominee Sally Kirkland. “I voted for Hurt Locker and Sandy [Bullock]. She took my acting workshop when she was starting out in New York.”

 

Welllll, there you have it. To recap, JoBeth Williams is going to investigate the motion-capture scourge sweeping Hollywood, Sally Kirkland didn’t even watch the movie tied for the lead in nominations (that also happens to have grossed $2.7 billion globally; after all, actors hate money), and in the end they voted for the ensemble film that was only nominated for one acting prize anyway. Next thing you know, Tippi Hedren will be bitching about how all those abused six-legged horses turned her off. Why do we do this for seven months a year, again?