Current status of project:
The group met with Dr. Dosenbach on Wednesday, September 2 to discuss details of the project. We discussed the challenges facing MRI (particularly pediatric MRI), which include subjects falling asleep during scans. Currently, physicians and technicians have little knowledge of the alertness of the patient in the scanner and are usually unaware if the patient is about to fall asleep. Dr. Dosenbach told us that most image processing takes place after the images have been acquired and that he often discards up to 90% of the scans taken in a given study, resulting in a loss of time and money. This loss became the motivation for our project: a front-end intervention software that uses eye-tracking data to inform physicians and technicians about the alertness level of the patient as the scan is being performed. This will hopefully reduce the amount of unusable scans by allowing drowsy patients to take breaks or reschedule their scans. Dr. Dosenbach suggested meeting every other week if we moved forward with this project. Following this meeting, the group decided to accept this project. Group members have begun background reading on eye movement during sleep, with emphasis on stage 1 sleep.
Work planned for next week:
We plan to continue background reading in order to supplement our understanding of the problem and determine if any other solutions have been implemented. We also hope to gain an understanding about how eye movement and pupil dilation changes prior to sleep. Dr. Dosenbach plans to send us a set of eye tracker data from several patients, so we can see what data is acquired during a scan and start to brainstorm about how this data could be used in our project.
Anything needed from client or TA or instructor to continue work:
Eye tracker data needed from Dr. Dosenbach.
The group met with Dr. Dosenbach on Wednesday, September 2 to discuss details of the project. We discussed the challenges facing MRI (particularly pediatric MRI), which include subjects falling asleep during scans. Currently, physicians and technicians have little knowledge of the alertness of the patient in the scanner and are usually unaware if the patient is about to fall asleep. Dr. Dosenbach told us that most image processing takes place after the images have been acquired and that he often discards up to 90% of the scans taken in a given study, resulting in a loss of time and money. This loss became the motivation for our project: a front-end intervention software that uses eye-tracking data to inform physicians and technicians about the alertness level of the patient as the scan is being performed. This will hopefully reduce the amount of unusable scans by allowing drowsy patients to take breaks or reschedule their scans. Dr. Dosenbach suggested meeting every other week if we moved forward with this project. Following this meeting, the group decided to accept this project. Group members have begun background reading on eye movement during sleep, with emphasis on stage 1 sleep.
Work planned for next week:
We plan to continue background reading in order to supplement our understanding of the problem and determine if any other solutions have been implemented. We also hope to gain an understanding about how eye movement and pupil dilation changes prior to sleep. Dr. Dosenbach plans to send us a set of eye tracker data from several patients, so we can see what data is acquired during a scan and start to brainstorm about how this data could be used in our project.
Anything needed from client or TA or instructor to continue work:
Eye tracker data needed from Dr. Dosenbach.