Thursday, July 02, 2009

A Field Switch

So in the field of my research, I begin work on a new field.

I stay within the broad realm of 'Biomedical Imaging and Image Processing' but my topic of research shifts from the field of 'Imaging for Virology' to 'Computed Tomography (CT)'. As I begin on this path, a vast plethora of information comes up. There is information of various types - historical, business-related and technical. Historical information includes: when the CT was invented (1937), when major advances were made (1960-s by Hounsfield in EMI labs, the same company which owned the Beatles label!), and so on. Business-related info deals with leading CT scanner manufacturers (Toshiba, Marconi...), costs of various technologies etc. The technical angle translates into the literature survey, or papers I would have to read (YES.. it's pretending-to-read-the-paper-but-actually-sleeping time).

And while treading my first few steps on this path (the de facto first step was reading the Wikipedia entry), I came across a nice video (embedded below) about a group of researchers giving ideas for improving CT technology. I loved the presentation style. So I watched other videos by this group (on different techonologies) - I especially liked these two: On controlling a helicopter by neural control, On inexpensive Virtual Reality.


PS: One query for the writing gurus out there.... Is the usage of de facto in my post correct? Or would you suggest something different?