NASA high performance computing, communications, image processing, and data visualization-potential applications to medicine.

Abstract

High-speed information processing technologies being developed and applied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA and Department of Defense mission needs have potential dual-uses in telemedicine and other medical applications. Fiber optic ground networks connected with microwave satellite links allow NASA to communicate with its astronauts in Earth orbit or on the moon, and with its deep space probes billions of miles away. These networks monitor the health of astronauts and or robotic spacecraft. Similar communications technology will also allow patients to communicate with doctors anywhere on Earth. NASA space missions have science as a major objective. Science sensors have become so sophisticated that they can take more data than our scientists can analyze by hand. High performance computers--workstations, supercomputer and massively parallel computers are being used to transform this data into knowledge. This is done using image processing, data visualization and other techniques to present the data--one's and zero's in forms that a human analyst can readily relate to and understand. Medical sensors have also explored in the in data output--witness CT scans, MRI, and ultrasound. This data must be presented in visual form and computers will allow routine combination of many two dimensional MRI images into three dimensional reconstructions of organs that then can be fully examined by physicians. Emerging technologies such as neural networks that are being "trained" to detect craters on planets or incoming missiles amongst decoys can be used to identify microcalcification in mammograms.