"Minority Report" Tech Meets the Operating Room

Technology showcased in the movie Minority Report, which enabled Tom Cruise to swipe through midair images in the 2002 film, could soon become a staple of hospital operating rooms. A new gesture-controlled computer interface aims to give surgeons easier access to medical images during marathon surgical operations. The experimental medical system takes advantage of Leap Motion controllers that can sense and track people's hand gestures. South Korean researchers developed their own "GestureHook" software that can translate the gestures captured by a Leap Motion device into commands for several different types of medical software. "We thought that using gestures as a new interface for controlling software in hospitals would provide access to computers for surgeons during procedures," says Ben Joonyeon Park, a software developer on the Medical Information Development Team at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea.