Software technology developed by Iowa State University engineers will give contestants of NBC’s The Biggest Loser Couples a close look inside their bodies. The episode airs at 7 p.m. (Central) on Tuesday, Jan. 12. A doctor will use the BodyViz technology to show contestants their MRI scans in 3-D.
James Oliver, an Iowa State professor of mechanical engineering and director of the university’s CyberInnovation Institute, and Eliot Winer, an Iowa State associate professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State’s Virtual Reality Applications Center, developed the technology to convert flat images from medical scans into 3-D images that can be easily understood and can be manipulated with an Xbox game controller. Thom Lobe, a pediatric surgeon based at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, helped the engineers design a tool doctors could use.
BodyViz.com, a startup company founded by the three and based at the CyberInnovation Institute, is now marketing the software as “Simple. Visual. 3D.”
Read a related story in The Ames Tribune here.