Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems, methods and instrumentalities associated with multi-view 3D human model estimation using machine learning (ML) based techniques. These techniques may use synthetically generated data to train an ML model that may be used to progressively regress a 3D human body model based on multi-view 2D images. The training data may be synthetically generated based on statistical distributions of human poses and human body shapes, as well as a statistical distribution of camera viewpoints. The progressive regression may be performed based on consensus features shared by the multi-view images and diversity features derived from at least one of the multi-view images. Consistency between the multi-view images may also be maintained during the regression process.

Abstract: The physical characteristics of one or more anatomical structures of a person may change in accordance with conditions surrounding the determination of such physical characteristics. Machine learning based techniques may be used to determine a template representation of the one or more anatomical structures that may indicate the physical characteristics of the one or more anatomical structures free of the impact imposed by changing conditions. The template representation may then be used to predict the physical characteristics of the one or more anatomical structures under a new set of conditions, without subjecting the person to additional medical scans.

Abstract: Detecting motions associated with a body part of a patient may include using an image sensor installed inside a medical scanner to capture first and second images of the patient inside the medical scanner, wherein the first image may depict the patient in a first state and the second image may depict the patient in a second state. A first area, in the first image, that corresponds to the body part of the patient may be identified and a second area, in the second image, that corresponds to the body part may also be identified so that a first plurality of features may be extracted from the first area of the first image and a second plurality of features may be extracted from the second area of the second image. A motion associated with the body part of the patient may be determined based on the first and second pluralities of features.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems, methods and instrumentalities associated with multi-person joint location and pose estimation based on an image that depicts multiple people in a scene, where at least some of the joint locations of a person may be blocked or obstructed by other people or objects in the scene. The estimation may be performed by detecting and grouping joint locations in the image using a bottom-up approach, and refining each group of detected joint locations by recovering obstructed joint location(s) that may be missing from the group. The detection, grouping, and/or refinement may be accomplished based on one or more machine learning (ML) models that may be implemented using artificial neural networks such as convolutional neural networks.

Abstract: Automatic hand gesture determination may be a challenging task considering the complex anatomy and high dimensionality of the human hand. Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with recognizing a hand gesture in spite of the challenges. An apparatus in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure may use machine learning based techniques to identify the area of an image that may contain a hand and to determine an orientation of the hand relative to a pre-defined direction. The apparatus may then adjust the area of the image containing the hand to align the orientation of the hand with the pre-defined direction and/or to scale the image area to a pre-defined size. Based on the adjusted image area, the apparatus may detect a plurality of hand landmarks and predict a gesture indicated by the hand based on the plurality of detected landmarks.

Abstract: A system for visual inspection of signal lights at a railroad crossing includes a data source comprising a stream of images, the stream of images including images of signal lights at a railroad crossing, an inspection module configured via computer executable instructions to receive the stream of images, detect signal lights and light instances in the stream of images, encode global information relevant to ambient luminosity and return a first feature vector, encode patch information of luminosity of detected signal lights and return a second feature vector, concatenate the first feature vector with the second feature vector and return a concatenated feature vector, and decode the concatenated feature vector and provide status of the signal lights.

Abstract: A person's privacy is protected by the law in many settings and disclosed herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with anonymizing an image of a person while still preserving the visual saliency and/or utility of the image for one or more downstream tasks. These objectives may be accomplished using various machine-learning (ML) techniques such as ML models trained for extracting identifying and residual features from the input image as well as ML models trained for transforming the identifying features into identity-concealing features and for preserving the utility features of the image. An output image may be generated based on the various ML models, wherein the identity of the person may be substantially disguised in the output image while the background and utility attributes of the original image may be substantially maintained in the output image.

Abstract: Described herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with automatically annotating a 3D image dataset. The 3D automatic annotation may be accomplished based on a 2D manual annotation provided by an annotator and by propagating, using a set of machine-learning (ML) based techniques, the 2D manual annotation through sequences of 2D images associated with the 3D image dataset. The automatically annotated 3D image dataset may then be used to annotate other 3D image datasets upon passing a readiness assessment conducted using another set of ML based techniques. The automatic annotation of the images may be performed progressively, e.g., by processing a subset or batch of images at a time, and the ML based techniques may be trained to ensure consistency between a forward propagation and a backward propagation.

Abstract: Described herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with generating a multi-dimensional representation of a medical environment based on images of the medical environments. Various pre-processing and/or post-processing operations may be performed to supplement and/or improve the multi-dimensional representation. These operations may include determining semantic information associated with the medical environment based on the images and adding the semantic information to the multi-dimensional representation in addition to space and time information. The operations may also include anonymizing a person presented in the multi-dimensional representation, adding synthetic views to the multi-dimensional representation, improving the quality of the multi-dimensional representation, etc. The multi-dimensional representation of the medical environment generated using these techniques may allow a user to experience and explore the medical environment, for example, via a virtual reality device.

Abstract: Sensing device(s) may be installed in a medical environment to captures images of the medical environment, which may include an ultrasound probe and a patient. The images may be processed to determine, automatically, the position of the ultrasound probe relative to the patient's body. Based on the determined position, ultrasound image(s) taken by the ultrasound probe may be aligned with a 3D patient model and displayed with the 3D patient model, for example, to track the movements of the ultrasound probe and/or provide a visual representation of the anatomical structure(s) captured in the ultrasound image(s) against the 3D patient model. The ultrasound images may also be used to reconstruct a 3D ultrasound model of the anatomical structure(s).

Abstract: Described herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with automatically annotating a 3D image dataset. The 3D automatic annotation may be accomplished based on a 2D manual annotation provided by an annotator and by propagating, using a set of machine-learning (ML) based techniques, the 2D manual annotation through sequences of 2D images associated with the 3D image dataset. The automatically annotated 3D image dataset may then be used to annotate other 3D image datasets upon passing a readiness assessment conducted using another set of ML based techniques. The automatic annotation of the images may be performed progressively, e.g., by processing a subset or batch of images at a time, and the ML based techniques may be trained to ensure consistency between a forward propagation and a backward propagation.

Abstract: Systems, methods and instrumentalities are described herein for automatically devising and executing a surgical plan associated with a patient in a medical environment, e.g., under the supervision of a medical professional. The surgical plan may be devised based on images of the medical environment captured by one or more sensing devices. A processing device may determine, based on all or a first subset of the images, a patient model that may indicate a location and a shape of an anatomical structure of the patient and determine, based on all or a second subset of the images, an environment model that may indicate a three-dimensional (3D) spatial layout of the medical environment. The surgical plan may be devised based on the patient model and the environment model, and may indicate at least a movement path of a medical device towards the anatomical structure of the patient.

Abstract: A method for surgery planning is provided. The method may include: generating a surgery video displaying a process of a virtual surgery performed by a virtual surgical robot on a virtual patient based on a surgery plan relating to a robotic surgery to be performed on a patient by a surgical robot; transmitting the surgery video to a display component of an XR assembly used to render the surgery video for display to a user; recording one or more actions that the user performed on the virtual surgery based on user input received via an input component of the XR assembly; modifying the surgery plan based on the one or more recorded actions; and causing the surgical robot to implement the robotic surgery on the patient according to the modified surgery plan.

Abstract: A system and method for visualizing anatomical structure of a patient during a surgery are provided. An anatomical image and a first optical image of a patient may be obtained. The anatomical image may be captured by performing a medical scan on the patient before a surgery of the patient, and the first optical image may be captured during the surgery. A target image may be generated by combining the anatomical image and the first optical image. The target image may be rendered based on a viewpoint of a target operator of the surgery. A display device may be directed to display the rendered target image.

Abstract: The 3D pose of a person may be estimated by triangulating 2D representations of body keypoints (e.g., joint locations) of the person. The triangulation may leverage various metrics such as confidence scores associated with the 2D representations of a keypoint and/or temporal consistency between multiple 3D representations of the keypoint. The 2D representations may be arranged into groups, a candidate 3D representation may be determined for each group, taking into account of the confidence score of each 2D representation in the group, and the candidate 3D representation that has the smallest error may be used to represent the keypoint. Other 3D representation(s) of the keypoint determined from images taken at different times may be used to refine the 3D representation of the keypoint.

Abstract: The present disclosure provides a method for surgical automation. The method may include: obtaining video data generated in a surgical process using a camera; identifying a surgical stage in the surgical process based on the video data; and triggering an activation of a surgical equipment used for a surgical operation and/or providing a guidance of the surgical operation based on the surgical stage.

Abstract: The present disclosure provides systems and methods for medical assistant. The systems may obtain position information of a target inside a subject during an operation. The systems may also determine depth information of the target with respect to an operational region of the subject based on the position information. The systems may further direct an optical projection device to project an optical signal representing the depth information on a surface of the subject.

Abstract: A two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) representation of a patient may be provided (e.g., as part of a user interface) to enable interactive viewing of the patient's medical records. A user may select one or more areas of the patient representation. In response to the selection, at least one anatomical structure of the patient that corresponds to the selected areas may be identified based on the user selection. Medical records associated with the at least one anatomical structure of the patient may be determined based on one or more machine-learning models trained for detecting textual or graphical information associated with the at least one anatomical structure in the one or more medical records. The one or more medical records may then be presented, e.g., together with the 2D or 3D representation of the patient.

Abstract: A method and a system for managing healthcare records of a user are provided. The method includes storing an electronic medical record related to the user in form of a non-fungible token (NFT) written to a blockchain, associating a smart contract to the NFT in the blockchain, authorizing a request to access the electronic medical record related to the user based on the defined ownership of the electronic medical record stored in the blockchain, identifying one or more NFTs from the blockchain comprising one or more electronic medical records related to the user based on processing of the identifier information in associated one or more smart contracts therewith, in response to the request, and sending the one or more electronic medical records corresponding to the identified one or more NFTs to a requestor associated with the request.

Abstract: Described herein are systems, methods, and instrumentalities associated with generating a multi-dimensional representation of a medical environment based on images of the medical environments. Various pre-processing and/or post-processing operations may be performed to supplement and/or improve the multi-dimensional representation. These operations may include determining semantic information associated with the medical environment based on the images and adding the semantic information to the multi-dimensional representation in addition to space and time information. The operations may also include anonymizing a person presented in the multi-dimensional representation, adding synthetic views to the multi-dimensional representation, improving the quality of the multi-dimensional representation, etc. The multi-dimensional representation of the medical environment generated using these techniques may allow a user to experience and explore the medical environment, for example, via a virtual reality device.