The reality behind the problem at hand was that while the surgery room is a sterile, the control room — where image manipulation takes place — is not. A significant amount of time and effort is spent scrubbing in and out of the surgery room in order to view and manipulate the images. An increased length of surgery, chance of infection and reduced attention of the surgeon ensues.

During Ziraknejad’s PhD, he developed technology that detects a head position in 3D for use in whiplash injury research, and Liu and Homayoon wanted to know if the technology could be used to track hand movement during surgery. However, he noted that along the way, they learnt that hand gestures weren’t the most intuitive to surgeons

“That was where the whole idea — or the innovative part of the TIPSO — came up which was really that. Let’s project the virtual menu.”

The self-contained device works by projecting a menu on the bed sheet, like a virtual keyboard, and the surgeon passes there hand over an icon to select it.

“There is a zoom command that is sent wirelessly to the PACS server and the system monitor is right in front of the surgeon — they can do those actions in real time,” explained Ziraknejad.

TIPSO is already being used in some hospitals, including Surrey Memorial Hospital, and was unveiled at the Society of Interventional Radiology event in Vancouver this April, drawing the attention of interventionists from around the world. However, the formal commercialization of TIPSO will occur in November at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.

While his time at UBC delivered plenty for him in the classroom, Ziraknejad realized its broader impact. “Doing that PhD was very helpful for me in terms of finding the right resources and basically bringing the right tools into a venture.”