Category: GE (General Electric)

Posted on

GE Uses HoloLens to Teach Ultrasound Trainees

VRFocus has long reported on the benefits of using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the healthcare sector. From helping patients deal with mental illness, or recover from surgery, to teaching students about procedures, there’s almost unlimited applications to be had. The latest comes from General Electric (GE), with a team using Microsoft HoloLens to help train ultrasound sonologist students.

GE Ultrasound HoloLens

The project came about due to the lack of trained ultrasound sonologists in developing countries, meaning that mistakes are made and the wrong organ is scanned leading to patients having to return for further scans.

So GE Global Research has utilised the interactive capabilities of Microsoft HoloLens and created a programme to allow the headset to work in conjunction with a scanner. When a student wears the headset they’ll be able to see via a dummy where the organs are located and what they look like. These details are shown as the student moves the sonogram wand over the body, with the app teaching directions to specific organs and how to properly complete a full scan.

“We position virtual organs in the field of view of the operator, overlaid on top of the mannequin,” said Ratnadeep Paul, lead engineer for augmented and virtual reality at GE Global Research, in a GE Reports blog post. “This allows the technician to position the probe on top of the correct organ. The placement of the virtual organs will be done by live tracking of the patient’s body and using our own proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms.”

GE Ultrasound HoloLens

Still in the development phase, the team eventually plan to send ultrasound machines and AR headsets to hospitals, medical and nursing schools, in both developing and developed countries. “We are currently testing out the feasibility of integrating AR, AI and probe tracking in a single unified system and understanding how or if it can improve the efficiency of the ultrasound technician (especially for less skilled technicians) and reduce the errors in ultrasound imaging,” adds Paul.

Paul also mentions that GE Global Research is looking into teaching how to spot problems in pregnancy ultrasounds, creating an AR app for technicians to train on pregnant dummies. As medical advancements in VR and AR continue, VRFocus will keep you updated.

Posted on

Deluxe VR Collaborates with General Electric on GE Store VR Experience

Deluxe VR, a Los Angeles-based virtual reality (VR) production studio recently collaborated with General Electric (GE) on the new “GE Store”, a VR experience, which illustrates the various real-world ways in which GE’s various business units collaborate to solve problems.

The experience lets viewers select seemingly disparate GE business units -Healthcare, Oil & Gas, Energy Connection, Transportation, Digital, Renewable Energy, Global Research Center (GRC), or Aviation – letting them see the real-world ways in which they can work together.

The GE YouTube channel has five 360-degree video versions showcasing the GE Store: Transportation & Power, Healthcare + Oil and Gas, Digital & Renewable Energy and Global Research + Aviation. For example the video combining Healthcare with Oil and Gas transports users to the ocean floor to reveal how GE is using ultrasound technology to improve underwater crude oil pipelines.

Andy Goldberg, Chief Creative Officer of GE, said: “Conveying how the interconnectivity of GE technologies encourages the realization of bigger, more impactful outcomes was an ambitious, complex and somewhat abstract idea. VR was the best way to bring it to life, and the Deluxe team have been great partners in doing so. Within this VR experience, people are actively transported into different settings and can see the connections being made across our businesses. We wanted to push the technology beyond its usual boundaries, and Deluxe certainly helped us achieve that high quality execution.”

“GE has been consistently out in front of VR – they’re not afraid to go where other companies hesitate to engage,” said Malte Wagener, head of Deluxe VR. “It was fantastic to have the opportunity to work with Andy and his team. They understand what the medium can do and were really receptive to our designing an experience and visual language to tell the story of GE’s innovation.”

The GE store and the videos are just another example of companies outside of the videogame industry who are using immersive media as a way of promoting brands. For all the latest VR news from around the world, keep reading VRFocus.