Handling Heterogeneity in Collaborative Networked Surgical Simulators

Stand-alone and networked surgical virtual reality based simulators have been proposed as means to train surgical skills with or without a supervisor nearby the student or trainee -- However, surgical skills teaching in medicine schools and hospitals is changing, requiring the development of new tools to focus on: (i) importance of mentors role, (ii) teamwork skills and (iii) remote training support -- For these reasons, a surgical simulator should not only allow the training involving a student and an instructor that are located remotely, but also the collaborative training of users adopting different medical roles during the training sesión -- Collaborative Networked Virtual Surgical Simulators (CNVSS) allow collaborative training of surgical procedures where remotely located users with different surgical roles can take part in the training session -- To provide successful training involving good collaborative performance, CNVSS should handle heterogeneity factors such as users’ machine capabilities and network conditions, among others -- Several systems for collaborative training of surgical procedures have been developed as research projects -- To the best of our knowledge none has focused on handling heterogeneity in CNVSS -- Handling heterogeneity in this type of collaborative sessions is important because not all remotely located users have homogeneous internet connections, nor the same interaction devices and displays, nor the same computational resources, among other factors -- Additionally, if heterogeneity is not handled properly, it will have an adverse impact on the performance of each user during the collaborative sesión -- In this document, the development of a context-aware architecture for collaborative networked virtual surgical simulators, in order to handle the heterogeneity involved in the collaboration session, is proposed -- To achieve this, the following main contributions are accomplished in this thesis: (i) Which and how infrastructure heterogeneity factors affect the collaboration of two users performing a virtual surgical procedure were determined and analyzed through a set of experiments involving users collaborating, (ii) a context-aware software architecture for a CNVSS was proposed and implemented -- The architecture handles heterogeneity factors affecting collaboration, applying various adaptation mechanisms and finally, (iii) A mechanism for handling heterogeneity factors involved in a CNVSS is described, implemented and validated in a set of testing scenarios

Sistema integrado de generación de mapas de profundidad para videoconferencia 3D en tiempo real

This paper presents the implementation of a high quality real-time 3D video system intended for 3D videoconferencing -- Basically, the system is able to extract depth information from a pair of images coming from a short-baseline camera setup -- The system is based on the use of a variant of the adaptive support-weight algorithm to be applied on GPU-based architectures -- The reason to do it is to get real-time results without compromising accuracy and also to reduce costs by using commodity hardware -- The complete system runs over the GStreamer multimedia software platform to make it even more flexible -- Moreover, an autoestereoscopic display has been used as the end-up terminal for 3D content visualization

Diseño de una Oficina de Dirección de Proyectos (PMO) para la empresa SERACIS LTDA., que pertenece al sector de la Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada

En cualquier empresa, en cualquier sector, en su día a día se generan iniciativas con el fin de garantizar su permanencia en el mercado -- Ya sea diversificando su portafolio de productos o servicios con nuevas líneas de negocio, reestructurando la organización, implementando nuevas herramientas que colaborarán al desarrollo de la operación de la compañía, son estrategias que permanentemente protagonizan la actualidad de una empresa -- Sin embargo, el convertir estas iniciativas no solo en una realidad sino en un éxito requiere de una administración juiciosa y detallada durante su puesta en marcha -- La implementación de una metodología única y centralizada para la administración de proyectos es un camino que incrementa la probabilidad de éxito de estas iniciativas, y es precisamente ésta la función de una Oficina de Dirección de Proyectos (PMO) dentro de una organización -- El sector de la Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada está reflejando en éste momento un importante crecimiento tanto a nivel latinoamericano, como colombiano -- Así mismo, la empresa SERACIS LTDA, que es objeto de éste trabajo, está mostrando un importante crecimiento durante los últimos años -- Todos estos factores demuestran la importancia y necesidad de la implementación de una Oficina de Dirección de Proyectos dentro de la organización y justifican el presente estudio