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Innovation

Monash University takes game-like approach to capsule endoscopy

The university has also teamed up with other partners to create an AI system to help teachers maximise student engagement in classrooms.
Written by Aimee Chanthadavong, Contributor

Monash University researchers, together with researchers from  Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and Deakin University, have developed a game-like system aimed at promoting a playful approach to a common medical procedure known as capsule endoscopy.

The procedure typically involves using a tiny wireless camera with an ingestible sensor to capture footage of a patient's digestive tract, which can be uncomfortable and cause anxiety among patients. 

However, the system called InsideOut aims to humanise the process, according to project lead and director of the Exertion Games Lab at the Monash University's faculty of information technology Florian Mueller.

InsideOut involves a wearable device and an imaging capsule that is swallowed by the patient. The wearable device is worn around the patient's waist and displays real-time video that is captured by the capsule. Using the video, patients can "play" three game-like videos to explore how their gastrointestinal tract responds through drinking, eating, and physical activity. The reactions are mirrored on the display screen of the wearable device. 

The software also maps the user's body movements to various video game-like manipulations, such as scaling, rotation, balancing, and speed.

"Through this research, our team found the experiential perspective of a patient during a medical imaging procedure was often overlooked by associated medical applications. We designed InsideOut with the aim to introduce a playful experience for people to learn more about how their bodies work on the inside," Mueller said.  

"By challenging what the future of telehealth could look like, we aim to design technology in ways that recognise people's needs and contributes to a more humanised healthcare system." 

Elsewhere, researchers from Monash University, along with partners from Ecuador's Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Carnegie Mellon University from the United States, University of Technology, Sydney, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology, have jointly developed an artificial intelligence system called Moodoo to help teachers determine the best teaching position in a classroom to achieve maximum student engagement.

Monash University said Moodoo has been built using a set of metrics based on foundations of spatial analysis and pedagogy to identity these optimal teaching positions.

Project lead and senior lecturer from the faculty of information technology at Monash University, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, said the research analysed data from seven teachers who wore indoor positioning trackers.

"Our results showed that by using Moodoo, wearable trackers revealed the kinds of learning tasks performed by students in the classroom and the appropriate positioning approaches used by teachers," he said.

For instance, the data captured by Moodoo highlighted how providing increased teacher-student time ratio for hands-on learning as opposed to a one-way lecture delivery mode could deliver more successful learning outcomes.

"Our results form a foundation that can help us train novice teachers to use the classroom spaces effectively or to assess the impact of the spatial design on teaching and learning outcomes," Martinez-Maldonado said.

Following this research, Monash University said further studies using classroom spatial is underway to determine where teachers should stand in the classroom and how classrooms should be designed or laid out to further improve the learning experience.

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