Rafaela Timóteo, a former Master’s student from Instituto Superior Técnico, won second place at the Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge, in the “Master’s Thesis Award” category, for her master’s thesis on augmented reality application for oncoplastic breast surgery, supervised by Daniel Simões Lopes, a professor at Técnico and researcher at the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI). The results were announced on 22nd November, during an event at NOVA School of Science and Technology.
The project was awarded two thousand euros and aims to develop an augmented reality application to enhance pre-operative planning for breast reconstruction surgery. To this end, in partnership with surgeons, the alumna developed the BREAST Plus – an augmented reality interface with three-dimensional models of patients’ anatomy that provides these medical professionals with information on patients undergoing surgery.
Using HoloLens 2, a device developed by Microsoft equivalent to ‘augmented reality glasses’ (in headset format), BREAST Plus provides detailed and accurate information about the vascular network of the inferior abdominal wall, facilitating the subsequent medical procedure. The interface to which professionals have access features a report-like menu, using information from images of blood vessels (angiographies) obtained through computed tomography (commonly known as ‘CT’). The project received “a very positive response” from the surgeons.
Rafaela Timóteo has a BSc and a MSc degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Técnico. She is currently doing her PhD at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidade de Lisboa, maintaining her partnership with ITI.
According to Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, the organiser of the Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge, the competition “seeks to encourage cooperation between industry and the scientific community”, rewarding students and researchers who develop “research of practical utility for economic development and [to] improve people’s lives”. The competition rewards the best technology-based ideas, aligned with the scientific of human-centred design, artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems.
