INI’s Virtual Brain Segmenter Advances to Finals of Auggie Breakthrough Awards

The Virtual Brain Segmenter (VBS), a virtual reality tool for processing brain scan images, has been named a finalist for the 2018 Auggie Breakthrough Awards, which honor innovative academic-industry collaborations in virtual and augmented reality.

VBS was developed by INI’s Dominique Duncan, PhD, Tyler Ard, PhD, Arthur W. Toga, PhD and the industry group RareFaction Interactive to transform a tedious step in the scientific process into an immersive experience. After collecting MRI data, researchers typically correct errors in scan images by hand, but VBS allows them to speed up the process with a VR headset, joystick and larger-than-life images of the brain.

In an experimental trial, published in the Journal of Digital Imaging in July, participants finished a correction task 68 seconds faster using VBS compared with the traditional method, a highly significant time savings considering the task rarely took more than three minutes to complete.

Now, Dr. Duncan is traveling in Munich, Germany to represent INI at the Auggie Breakthrough Awards ceremony, where winners will be chosen in several categories, including Most Innovative Breakthrough, Most Impactful Breakthrough and Best in Show. Fellow finalists include representatives from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford, the Mayo Clinic and international collaborators from Finland, Australia and beyond. Projects span the health sciences, communications, education, resource management and gaming.

Read more about the finalists in the official press release

Learn more about VBS from USC News