Weekly Status Update #1: Lots of Sloths.

I’ve noticed I am having a really hard time maintaining a regular blog posting frequency here. So, inspired by Charl Botha’s always awesome ‘Weekly Head Voices’, I present you: the Weekly Status Update #1. The general idea and rules for these status updates:

  1. They will be bite-sized short updates.
  2. They will contain assorted musings, cool finds and perhaps some highlights from my lab journal.
  3. These may or may not contain useful/helpful information and will probably be completely incoherent.
  4. I have a thing for bullet point lists, so expect those in there too.

Right, so let’s get started!

  • As you may or may not know, I had the privilege of being the daily supervisor for two students for their nine month Master of Science thesis projects. Last month, both students successfully obtained their MSc titles. If these theses were like their babies, I would be like a very proud grandmother. Seriously though, I don’t really know how to describe how proud I am of them and their awesome projects, but I can describe their projects instead:
    • Berend Klein-Haneveld presented “RegistrationShop – an interactive 3D medical volume registration tool”. In his work he developed RegistrationShop as a tool that aims to make the complex process of 3D volume registration easier by providing simple interaction techniques and real-time visual feedback of the current registration results. Users are able to place landmarks in 3D either by surface picking or by tracing a ray through the volume until the desired location is reached. During the registration process they are provided with visualizations of both the moving and fixed volumes as well as the current registration result in a combined view.

      registrationshop
      Main interface of Berend Klein-Haneveld’s RegistrationShop with two CT lung datasets.
    • Cees-Willem Hofstede presented “The Online Anatomical Human – an online browser and annotation system for real human anatomy”. He worked on bringing anatomical education to a web browser, by creating an online environment in which a 3D anatomical model of the pelvis is linked to 2D medical imaging data. Users are able to annotate structures directly on the 3D mesh using landmark, brush and line tools and can enrich the model with their annotations.

      oah
      The Online Anatomical Human with a 3D model of the pelvis and linked orthogonal planes containing cryosectional data and label information.
  • You don’t need to tell me how awesome anatomical research is, but I read this cool article on how anatomical science is undergoing a revival. If there is anything I have learnt in working with anatomical researchers during my PhD project, it is that human anatomy is not a fully explored known thing. There are still many exciting new discoveries to be made in the field. Also, the consequences of lacking anatomical knowledge can be disastrous for surgical outcome. This combined with medical imaging and visualization techniques makes for a very exciting area of scientific research.
  • Do you know what sounds baby sloths make? Neither did I, but wow, am I glad I found out! Meh! Eh!

That’s about all I wanted to share for this week! Please reprimand me if I do not manage to post weekly status updates and enjoy your week 🙂

2 comments

  1. Whoohooo cool!!

    Dangit, I *have* to startup mine again, if only to mention the start of yours! (my excuse is that the weather here really does not condone blogging)

    1. Thanks!

      That would be great news for both your readers 😉 While the weather there does look amazing, I will just keep hoping it will rain at some point and looking forward to new WHV editions 🙂

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