Medicine by Satellite [G* reference]
wired.com
by Joanna Glasner
3:00 a.m. 15.Mar.99.PST
Starting with a few high-powered computers, 3-D modeling programs, and a NASA satellite, a group
of researchers said it has developed a system for transmitting advanced medical technology to
remote parts of the globe.
Their experiment, Project Mission, uses a high-speed satellite connection to tap into imaging
software used in treatments for cancer patients. The goal is that hospitals or clinics in remote places
that can't afford the expensive imaging software will still be able to use the technology.
The technology won't be widely available anytime soon. It will be a few years before global satellite
networks designed for high-speed data connections get off the ground. But researchers working on
the project -- which used a NASA satellite designed for high-speed data communication -- see
potential for a lot of other applications.
"The intent was really to start with a government satellite as an experiment, and then move on to
commercially available vehicles," said David Yun, an engineering professor at University of Hawaii at
Manoa and principal investigator for Project Mission. Yun is looking at ways that commercial
satellite networks can run medical applications.
In the meantime, a number of small hospitals and clinics have shown interest in the
cancer-treatment technology, said Seong Mun, a professor of radiology at Georgetown University
who also worked on Project Mission. Much of the interest was financial.
"Cancer-treatment planning requires lots of computer computation, and the kinds of computers
necessary to do this tend to be expensive," Mun said. Even if clinics can afford the programs and
equipment, they might not be able to find people with the expertise to keep the applications running.
To explain how the system works, researchers created an online demonstration that shows how a
two-dimensional scanned image is processed through 3-D imaging software to plan a treatment for a
prostate-cancer patient. In their tests, researchers used satellites to beam images between medical
and computing centers in Hawaii, Washington, DC, and Ohio.
Using technology to connect advanced medical centers with remote hospitals and clinics isn't
anything new. Several new telemedicine applications have picked up steam in the past decade as
hospitals turn to videoconferencing and Net technologies to trade advice and treatment information.
The use of satellite technology, however, opens up some new possibilities, especially in remote
areas that don't have access to high-speed wires for bandwidth-sucking applications like 3-D
imaging.
Project Mission, funded mostly by the US Department of Defense and NASA, got a head start in
satellite-communications research by getting permission from NASA to use its Advanced
Communication Technology Satellite. NASA launched ACTS in 1993, planning to use the satellite to
test advanced communication technologies.
But according to Yun, ACTS doesn't have enough fuel to keep it in orbit for more than another few
years. So scientists will take the results of the Project Mission research and find a way to apply
them to satellite networks launched by commercial consortiums like Globalstar and Iridium.
The satellite networks that will be in operation over the next couple of years probably won't be
powerful enough to handle high-speed data connections, Yun said. But the satellites might be used
in medical applications where a super fast exchange of information isn't essential. More possibilities
will open up in 2003, when the Teledesic consortium launches a constellation of satellites designed
for high-speed data.
Other players are also looking at the results of the experiment. Yun said the Department of Defense
-- the project's biggest contributor -- is particularly interested in technology for relaying sophisticated
3-D imaging programs through satellite networks. The military's interest in such applications was
piqued after the Gulf War, when it saw ways that sophisticated satellite applications could play a
role in improving technology for intercepting enemy missiles, Yun said.
Project Mission researchers are also looking at commercial applications in the medical field.
Besides cancer-treatment applications, Yun sees the possibility of taking a range of established
telemedicine procedures, like teleconferencing and remote diagnosis software, and using satellite
connections to bring the technology to remote parts of the world.
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