AMD Teams with Barco on Medical Display Technolgy

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,534
AMD is helping radiologist move through medical images with extreme detail with Barco's Coronis Uniti. They are using 12MP images that are being enhanced in different ways to help the radiologist inspect the images. If you watch the video below, you will see some very impressive technology. AI has also gotten a lot of press is the radiology field lately, but I heard a report on NPR this week that pointed to AI not pushing radiologist out of the equation, but rather adding to their toolbag. You can see more on AMD's Machine Learning for medical in the second video below.

Check out the Uniti in action.

Come take a deep dive into the Barco Coronis Uniti Medical Monitor powered by AMD. Learn how AMD Technology is helping the doctors on a daily basis!
 
I think the medical field is an excellent place to use machine learning, hopefully it helps people. Good for AMD too, maybe they'll push harder into the medical field, probably some good money there.
 
I have to say that it is really great to see AMD working with the medical field, some really exciting possibilities could come from this.
 
"We're sorry you had to undergo chemo, it was actually a dead pixel, not cancer."

However they are most likely Class 1 panels that cost as much as a Titan Assho...err CEO Edition.
 
"We're sorry you had to undergo chemo, it was actually a dead pixel, not cancer."

However they are most likely Class 1 panels that cost as much as a Titan Assho...err CEO Edition.

While I understand your tongue-in-cheek humor there are requirements for calibration on most medical imaging, especially mammo, with daily, weekly, quarterly, and semiannual testing. Then there are credentials for all involved and tracking/record keeping requirements. Here's a quote from FDA.gov: "At a minimum, the system must track "positive mammographic findings," which refers to mammograms interpreted as "Suspicious" or "Highly suggestive of malignancy." Then there is the entire diagnosis and treatment path from findings and initial impressions, biopsies, follow-ups, etc. - but you did make me chuckle

And yes, diagnostic hardware can get stupid expensive. A basic read-room can be $30k-$35k, not even counting some of the specialized mammo hardware. The 12mp 33.6" Coronis Fusion in the video is about $36k all by itself. 5-6mp screens will run $10k-$20k, depending on features and screen size.
 
The Chronos displays themselves have been shipping for some time. I got to work with three of them a couple of years back.

Panel resolution is 4200 x 2880 and the versions I worked with were driven by two DP 1.2 cables. Works as two 1100 x 2880@60 Hz or two frame interleaved 4200 x 2880@30 Hz displays. The display driver is just a massive FPGA and everything is on a removable board so they could have updated to a single DP1.3 as a true 4200 x 2880@60 Hz unit. Barco bundling Polaris based graphics cards is new to me (mine were bundled with Pitcairn models) The driver for this display is pseudo proprietary. It is based upon AMD's source and the cards run their own Barco firmware. This is mainly to lock down support as this display is FDA certified as a medical device. The display will work with other video cards, you just won't get any sort of support from Barco. The Barco driver does have a few custom features, some of which are in the video. The one that I like what wasn't shown is the virtual display window. Medical applications are very slow to get updated and several have issues exceeding the initial 12 bit dimension values for EDID (ie going beyond 4096 pixel in a direction). Barco's solution was to create a virtual display in a window that would respond as if it were its own full screen display.

The 1000 nit brightness isn't peak, it is what it can do perpetually. Peak is actually 2000 nit so that when a doctor want to do a side-by-side with an x-ray film, there is enough light for it. The top of the display has an embedded magnetic bar and comes with two magnetic clips for it. Another medical feature is that the display itself is sealed so that it can be used in labs so bacteria can't sneak into the unit.

While at RSNA a few years back, I got to talk to one of Barco's engineers about their displays and backend technology. She was surprisingly excited by FreeSync. The feature they were chasing was to use the display's ambient light sensor to try to sync the fresh rate of the displays with external light flicker to reduce eye strain. Odd feature but makes sense in the image quality at all costs market of medical.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top