Virtual Reality Helps to Treat Babies' Hearts

Roland Piquepaille writes "In Denmark, about 350 babies need to be operated each year because of heart defect. And their hearts are very small, so it's hard to know the exact kind of defect before the operation. This is why the Aarhus University Hospital is using virtual reality software to model babies' hearts, according to BBC News. Now, surgeons and doctors can visualize a magnified heart in 3D before planning cardiac surgery. This also allows a better communication with parents which can understand what's wrong with their babies before the intervention. As the percentage of affected babies, about one per cent, is probably the same in many other countries, let's hope this software will be widely distributed. Congratulations to these Danish doctors and software writers for this brilliant usage of technology. This summary contains more details and pictures."

Virtual Reality?

[Tom7]

Let's just call this "3D imaging." Virtual reality has not been cool since 1996.

Re:Virtual Reality?

[TheRealMindChild]

Virtual Reality implies interaction. In this case, a doctor puts on some glasses and a glove, and can navigate/manipulate the hearts image to get the details he/she needs.

Re:Virtual Reality?

[falzer]

Yes... to his little heart's desire.

Reading that..

[shfted!]

Reading that makes me let out a heartfelt "awww". It's touching, really, that technology can do such wonderful things.

The end of evolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the end of survival of the fittest? These days, we have the technology to keep babies with heart defects alive, and they grow up and reproduce, and their genes become part of the gene pool. In the old days, the bad genes would die out and would be eliminated from the gene pool, thereby strengthening the human race.

This is yet more evidence that we're going to have to work a lot more on genetic engineering if we're going to advance as a species.

Re:The end of evolution?

[Ianoo]

Maybe it is, but what does it matter? In 10 or 15 years, we may well have the technology to improve our genes through technology (bigger brains, stronger bones, better healing capabilities, fewer defects). We won't need evolution any more. Until then, let's use current technology to help people less fortunate than ourselves get to that point. Then they can have kids without having to worry about passing their dodgy genes on to them, since they'll have been screened out while-u-wait using genetic tech.

Re:The end of evolution?

[bhima]

So evolution ceases to be survival of the fittest and becomes survival of the richest.

Re:The end of evolution?

[Ianoo]

Genetics will eventually be commoditised, just like every other form of technology. Also, who's to say that survival of the richest isn't survival of the fittest? In a capitalist society, the amount of $$$ you accumulate seems to be as good a measure as any of the "success of your genes" (money passed down from mommy and daddy are okay here too), barring those who win the lottery, of course.

Re:The end of evolution?

[bhima]

Yes eventually Genetics will be commoditized, just like every other form of technology. The richest are only the fittest in their niche so I would say that it is like a species having an temporary artificial advantage. Also the capitalist society is the only society nor is it, arguably, the most advantageous.

Re:The end of evolution?

[Ianoo]

Also the capitalist society is the only society nor is it, arguably, the most advantageous.

I agree, but it is the one we live in, and most likely will be for the next few decades at least.

Re:The end of evolution?

[bhima]

We are, perhaps making asumptions that might not be true. I assume you live in America, I bet you Assume I do to. I Don't.

And I think you're right capitalist society is evolving to something more than capitalist.

Slashdot Blibvert

[toxic666]

Why does /. keep posting articles submitted by this guy? He has a shabby blog on radio.weblogs.com and does a poor job stealing other writers work; the site is a blatant commercial effort. Yet /. keeps putting Roland's stuff up and linking to it.

What's the deal? Is there some kind of commercial payola a la 1970's radio? Maybe the editor has a thing going with Roland, in a Clinton-McGreevy-esque way.

*Cringe* I didn't need any of those mental images.

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=roland+pi que&author=&sort=1&op=stories [slashdot.org]/

78 stories posted (with obligatory, self-promoting links) this year. That's about one every three days.

He even has the audacity to advertise [smartmobs.com] that most of his traffic comes from Slashdot!

"This blog, Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends attracts about 150,000 visitors per month, of which 60% come from Slashdot"

Re:Slashdot Blibvert

[Dark Lord Seth]

Most Roland Piqesomething spams are posted by Michael.

Solve the problem by ignoring all articles posted by Michael. I already have any of Hemos' crap on ignore and it improved Slashdot!

Then again, if I were to ignore all incompetent Slashdot admins/editors, I'd be looking at the wquivalent of this [about]...

I saw this yesterday and it was pretty impressive

[evilNomad]

I was at the university and saw the 3D model of the heart, i must say it was pretty impressive, navigating around a heart in a 3D image created from the MRI scans with two simple tools is very cool.. Also some details for the nerds, they used 12x200mhz cpus to create the feed of 3x60fps, pretty amazing what those old cpus were able to create :)

Re:I saw this yesterday and it was pretty impressi

[ToshiroOC]

The Hubble telescope is run off of a ruggedized 486 system - ancient computer technology is everywhere :)