Personalized Medicine “It doesn't get more personal than this.”

22
A woman in Shanghai surfs the channels
on her TV with successive twirls
of her fingers, doing away with cumbersome
remote controls. A man in
Miami adjusts the room temperature
by waving his left hand, dims the lights
with his right, and locks his apartment
by drawing a quick ‘L’ in the air. In
Mumbai, a surgeon presents the victim
of a facially-disfiguring attack with an
anatomically accurate 3D virtual mirror
of how she will look after surgery, and in
San Francisco, a paraplegic plays virtual
soccer, his 3D avatar scoring goals with
masterful overhead scissor kicks.
It’s not science fiction, but realityin-the-making
– the brave new world
that the technological innovations of
Dr. Alex Bronstein of TAU’s Fleischman
Faculty of Engineering are helping to
usher in.
Bronstein’s technology, a complex
amalgam of mathematics, computer
science and engineering, allows imaging
of non-rigid shapes to create geometric
profiles of movable animate objects. This
enables the identification or “reading”
of the 3D object despite variations in
its form and position, such as a person
waving or jumping.
Myriad applications
At just 22, Bronstein, along with his
identical twin brother Michael, developed
a pioneering 3D facial recognition
modality that enables highly-accurate
identification of and differentiation
between people – and the astounding
ability to tell the brothers apart.
Licensed to an Israeli start-up in 2010,
this technology has major ramifications
for security – such as tracking terror-
On the Frontier of 3D
Advanced 3D technology and its real-world
applications stand to revolutionize
everything from security to
surgery – and TAU’s new
faculty recruit Dr. Alex
Bronstein is leading
the way
ists and enabling the use of ‘biometric
locks’ - in which our faces, no matter
what gestural variables, serve as infallible
PIN codes and signatures.
Using the same technology, 3D
recognition could open the door to a
world of multifaceted natural humanmachine
interfaces – for instance, the
use of specific facial gestures and body
movements to control computers, appliances
and the like, without the need
for keyboards, buttons and other soonto-be-passé
physical instruments.
Another bold advance is the development
of a ‘virtual mirror’ that generates
anatomically precise 3D post-surgery
images – a major innovation given
the fact that current visual prediction
in cosmetic and restorative surgery is
confined to 2D. Bronstein and his
collaborators’ technology could also
fundamentally change the way surgical
operations are performed in other areas,
such as neurosurgery, where surgical
planning and brain imaging will be
elevated to new heights of precision.
Bronstein is also collaborating with
a major American automobile company
to utilize his technology to make more
versatile and thus productive assembly
lines. And, with an array of additional
applications – including virtual dressing
rooms and computational archaeology –
his innovations are playing a formidable
role in the shaping of a new, 3D era.