CIS 2050 Final: Complete Review of all TedTalks and Articles
1 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Unit 1: Computing in Medicine and Food
Key Points:
• Computing plays an increasingly important role in medicine and food, traditionally in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI), computing tomography (CT), and moving quickly to unexpected
applications such as remote diagnostics and surgeries
o New analyses at the molecular and gene level are also beginning to yield fruits
• Computing in medicine is also introduced in popular commercial products in the forms of apps
using tablets, smartwatches, and other internet-based personalized devices
• Potential issues: medical and biological data can overload us with more information that we can
handle
o Privacy of medical information can be breached
o Medical data may not be reliable
o New technology may not be well received by the general public and affect the labor market
of the future
Reading: Touchless Interaction in Surgery
• Key Insights:
o Beyond demonstrating technical feasibility, touchless interaction in surgery should be
designed to work within operating-theatre practices
o Gesture design should consider not only individual interaction with medical images but how
they are used in the context of collaborative discussion
o Gesture design across one and two hands should accommodate expressive richness, as well as
the surgeons hands, but is contained by the close proximity of the surgical term and
movement restrictions due to sterile practice
• Touchless interaction with medical images lets surgeons maintain sterility during surgical
procedures
• Visual displays for accessing pre- and intra-operative images include:
o Computer tomography (CT)
o Magnetic resonance imagery (MRI)
o Fluoroscopy
• These support diagnosis and planning, and provide a virtual "line of sight" into the body during
surgery
• Need to maintain a strict boundary between what is sterile and what is not
• Surgical team members may not be always available, producing frustration and delay
• Issuing instruction can be cumbersome and time consuming
• Indirect manipulation is not conducive to the more analytical and interpretive tasks performed by
surgeons
o The way they interact, browse and selectively manipulate them is closely bound up with their
clinical knowledge and clinical interpretation
• Surgeons need direct control of image data to mentally "get to grips" with what is going on in a
procedure
o Some clinician pull their surgical gown over their hands and manipulate the mouse through
their gown
• These practices are not risk free
• These are considered justified in non-invasive procedures due to time saving and direct
control of the images
o In invasive procedures, surgeons must remove gloves and rescrub, taking up precious time
• For long procedures, it can cause the procedure to be delayed significantly - increasing
financial cost and clinical risk
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• Giving surgeons direct control over image manipulation and navigation while maintaining sterility
within the operating theatre is a key goal
• Approaches:
o Insert a barrier between the sterile gloves of the surgeon and a non-sterile interaction device
• Practical concerns
• Involve inherent risks due to the potential for damage to the barrier
o Other approaches have sought to enable interaction techniques in the operating theatre that
avoid the need to contact the device
• Ex. Tracking gestures of surgeon (gesture/air-based)
• Ex. Kinetic sensors
▪ Lower financial cost
▪ Development complexity
▪ No need to wear trackable sensors
▪ Scene depth --> compute the position of the "skeleton"
• This is feasible but the concern is how to best design and implement these touchless
systems
• Developers must view these systems as sterile ways to perform the same imaging but must also
understand what clinicians are trying to achieve through
Reading: Computation biology and bioinformatics
• Computational biology/bioinformatics is the application of computer sciences and allied
technologies to answer the questions of Biologists (about the mysteries of life)
o A mere application of computers to solve any problem a biologist would not merit a separate
discipline
o Computational biology and bioinformatics are mainly concerned with problems involving
data emerging from within cells of living beings
• Deal with application of computers in solving problems of molecular biology
• Data emerging from cells include: DNA, RNA, protein sequences, and micro array images
o Computer applications:
• Analysing DNA sequence data to locate genes (4 letter strings)
• Analysing RNA sequence data to predict their structure (4 letter strings)
• Analysing protein sequence data to predict location inside cell (20 letter strings)
• Analysing gene expression images
o NOT computational biology:
• Developing medicinal plant data base
• Using computers to identify finger prints
• Using computers in process control in bio-technology industries
• Using computers to analyze ECG signals
• DNA computing and Bioinformatics are NOT related
o While bioinformatics deals with analysis of information represented by DNA, DNA
computing is about creating bio-computers using DNA and enzymes to do mathematical
calculations
• Bioinformatics and Biometry are NOT related
o Biometry is about uniquely recognizing humans based upon intrinsic physical traits
(fingerprints, eye retinas/irises, facial patterns, hand geometry)
• Bioinformatics vs. Computational Biology
o Both are computers + biology
o Bioinformatics = Biology + Computers
• Biologists who specialize in use of computational tools and systems to answer
problems of biology
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find more resources at oneclass.com
o Computational Biology = Computers + Biology
• Computer scientist, mathematicians, statisticians, and engineers specialize in
developing theories, algorithms, and techniques for such tools and systems
• Biology Terms
o Eukaryotic, Prokaryotic
o Cell
o Nucleus, Chromosomes, DNA (A-T; C=G)
o Genome, Gene
o RNA (A=U, G=C)
o Proteins, Amino Acids
• Branches of Bioinformatics:
o Genomics (genome) --> sequence alignment
o Proteonomics (proteome) --> sequence alignment
o Computer-Aided Drug Design (search for drug molecules)
o Bio Data Bases & Data Mining
o Molecular Phylogenetics (evolution)
o Microarray Informatics (gene expression)
o Systems Biology
Video: Genomics 101
• Genome - all of the DNA that is in a living organism (common to all life)
• DNA is organized in genes and chromosomes
• In the genome is the history of species
• DNA:
o A,T,C,G - put together as base pairs
o Create a language
• Human genome consists of 3.2 billion base pairs
• Getting sick --> "bug" in genome
• Could cure cancer if we understood it at a genomic level
• All humans are 99.9% similar (in DNA)
o Pinot Noir, mouse and human all have around the same number of genes
o Therefore, the number of genes does not change an organism's complexity
• Technology has allowed us to sequence genomes efficiently
• We can now create and synthesize genomes (ex. Bacteria in UTIs)
o Can turn yeast into mycoplasma by transferring genome between organisms
• We are part of an ecosystem --> microbes have larger impact
• We can scientifically characterize "Terroir"
o Sample
o Sequence
o Correlate
o Fertilize
Video: Wireless Future of Medicine
• Future is digital, wireless, medical devices
• We will be able to monitor all of our vitals on our smartphone
• Analyze our sleep, food intake, glucose levels, energy expenditure…etc
• Stethoscope is "on its way out"
o --> handheld ultrasound
• Holter monitor --> small patches
o Sensors --> body area network --> gateway
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
