Internship: Perception optimization for healthcare devices (VR visualization, gaze tracking)

Barco

Barco designs technology that makes everyday life a little better. Seeing beyond the image, we develop sight, sound, and sharing solutions to help customers work together, share insights, and wow audiences. Healthcare is one of the key markets of Barco. For many years Barco has been contributing to improved healthcare by means of solutions in radiology, mammography, surgery, dermatology, dentistry, pathology etc.

Innovation in healthcare

The Barco Labs Healthcare team is constantly looking for new innovative solutions that push forward the state-of-the-art and can improve healthcare models. This group takes care of the entire innovation cycle: ideation and MVP definition, market evaluation and business case creation, R&D and clinical work for creation of proof of concepts and solutions, market and clinical / regulatory validation of the solutions, business model and business plan creation, up to commercial introduction and early pilot sales.

The task at hand

Barco is developing eye tracking systems to integrate into displays and streamlining workflows in image-guided therapy, focusing on 3D visualization. There are two primary projects linked to this vacancy, of which the choice is based on your interests, motivation, and skills:

Improving gaze tracking measurement setups to be integrated into displays. The goal is to track the location of the gaze on the monitor at all times. The groundwork for both a simulation setup and a hardware setup are laid. The task would be to improve these setups. The simulation environment works in Unreal Engine and most work needs to be done towards automating the process of rendering multiple gaze features and locations leveraging Unreal’s Metahuman. The physical setup takes the shape of a robotic head of which the direction of the eyes can be precisely controlled. The work would consist of integrating the robotic head into a data gathering setup. Furthermore, the ambient light has an impact on the pupil size and hence also on any gaze tracking to be performed. There are 2 positions possible in this project, one for the software aspect and one for the mechanical design aspect. 

Stereoscopic perception optimization for 3D/AR/VR medical devices. The goal is to create a perception model that can simulate and optimize stereoscopic devices, addressing high requirements for image fidelity, quality assurance and usability.  The perception model will take the use-case requirements and determine what the most optimized visualization solution is. You will identify Critical-to-Quality parameters (CTQs) and map them to Perception-Quality Indicators (PQIs). The focus will initially be on VR devices, with potential expansion to other stereoscopic devices (e.g. 3D displays and VR/AR-headsets). Test patterns and measurement procedures will be developed using tools like Unity and Unreal Engine.

Qualifications

Generic Software Skills

• Programming (C, C++, Python, C#)

AND  

• Modern 3D development (Unreal Engine, Unity, WebGL, Vulkan, DirectX, …)  

• Image processing  

OR

• Mechanical design (CAD / Fusion360 / Solidworks) 

Also, you …  

• Have an open and enthusiastic can-do attitude  

• Have an analytical and methodical thinking and way of working  

• Are fluent in spoken and written communication in English 

Furthermore, you should be a student in a technical discipline, eligible to work at our HQ in Kortrijk Belgium.