[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni. Welcome back to From Here Forward, your favorite UBC Podcast Network podcast. We're your girls, Carol and Jeevan.
[00:00:15] Jeevan Sangha: And spring is just around the corner, so with the days getting longer, I actually feel like I'm getting my spark back. How about you, Carol?
[00:00:21] Carol Eugene Park: My spark is also returning. I'm really excited for the longer, sunny days, but I'm not so excited for the rain to return. You know, the whole April showers bring May flowers thing? Although I guess over there, it's raining all the time now.
[00:00:33] Jeevan Sangha: Yeah, you can't escape it. They call it Raincouver for a reason. I almost thought we were getting some optimism from you at the beginning, and I, like, fell back in my seat a little. It was like I wasn't prepared.
[00:00:42] Carol Eugene Park: I was, but then I remembered rain, so I reversed, but sorry. It is what it is. But why don't you take us to today's episode? Who did we talk to? What are we talking about?
[00:00:52] Jeevan Sangha: For this episode, we sat down with David Black, a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering at UBC. David's research focuses on medical robotics and imaging, more specifically, exploring remote ultrasound modalities.
[00:01:04] Carol Eugene Park: In November of last year, David was given the Mitacs Innovation Award for his groundbreaking work in developing a mixed reality remote ultrasound technology system.
[00:01:13] Jeevan Sangha: That was a lot of big words back to back to back, but essentially. This system will make it easier and more accessible for Canadians, especially those in rural areas, to receive and even conduct ultrasounds without having to travel far distances.
[00:01:25] Carol Eugene Park: Super neat, super great, and we learned a lot about what it takes to develop new systems in a healthcare setting from David. So, let's get into it.
[00:01:34] David Black: My name is David. And I'm a PhD candidate at UBC. I also did a bachelor's at UBC in engineering physics, and I'm working on a remote ultrasound system so that we can improve care for a lot of small communities around Canada and elsewhere.And yeah, I'm happy to be joining.
[00:01:50] Jeevan Sangha: Awesome. You mentioned before you started your PhD journey, you studied engineering physics at UBC. For some people that might be a pretty niche research trajectory. Can you talk to us a bit about what sparked your interest in this field?
[00:02:02] David Black: Yeah, I'm very interested in robotics because it kind of bridges the gap between engineering and some physics as well. So it fits well with my undergrad. A lot of my family is very medical though. So I was always drawn to the medical aspects of robotics. And then when my supervisor and I were talking about what we could potentially do for my PhD project, I was interested in robotic ultrasound. But he kind of convinced me that this is actually not very practical.
[00:02:30] In a lot of small towns, you can't really have a big expensive robot in every little community. It's like very big, it's expensive, it's not necessarily comfortable for the patients, and it's also kind of complicated to set up and maintain. So we then kind of came up with our alternative system instead and have been going with that ever since.
[00:02:50] Carol Eugene Park: So just to define it for layman's terms. Like, what is robotic ultrasound?
[00:02:55] David Black: Robotic ultrasound would be, basically, you have a robotic arm which is mounted next to the patient's bed. And this arm has an ultrasound probe at the end. And essentially, instead of having a person doing the ultrasound on the patient, you have the robot carrying out those motions.
[00:03:11] And that could mean that it's done autonomously. What we're mostly working on is teleoperation, which means that an expert sonographer or radiologist is actually controlling that robot remotely. So essentially the robot directly copies all the motions that they make. And so they have full control over the scan, but they're doing it from a remote location.
[00:03:31] But my research is in replacing the robot with a person. So the way we do that is instead of having a robot, which, as I mentioned earlier, is really impractical, we actually have a novice person who doesn't need to be experienced at all in ultrasound, and they wear a mixed reality headset. And they see through it their environment as usual, but also a virtual ultrasound probe. And their job is just to align their real probe with the virtual one, and then follow it as it moves around. And this virtual probe is controlled in real time. By an expert in the remote location.
[00:04:07] Jeevan Sangha: Sounds very futuristic. So can you talk to us a bit more about how your research impacts medical imaging and healthcare delivery a bit more? So why ultrasound systems specifically?
[00:04:17] David Black: Yeah, ultrasound is actually an interesting imaging modality because it's very safe. It's non-invasive. There's no radiation. You just hold this probe on a patient and you can see things [00:04:30] inside. And so it's growing a lot in popularity and in use for all kinds of diagnostics. For example, in trauma, they almost always do ultrasounds for obstetrics. So for pregnancies, there's very frequent ultrasound exams, any kind of abdominal pain, you need an ultrasound, so it's really important. And, at the same time, it's really tricky though, because the images for a layperson is just a bunch of grey and black blobs. So, you really need to be an expert to understand and to carry out the exam. And so this is kind of causes a conflict.
[00:05:03] It's such an accessible, nice modality. But at the same time, you need the people to do it. And a lot of small towns just don't have those people. So either they have to wait for a traveling sonographer who comes maybe once a month or so. Or very often they have to travel themselves to the nearest, larger medical center.
[00:05:21] So, for, for a town like Bella Bella, they are actually in Vancouver Coastal Health's, health authority. So, they have to fly down to Vancouver if they want a scan. And depending on weather and other conditions, that's not always easy. It also means usually one day of travel, one day for the scan, one day to travel back and you're away from family and work. And this is kind of the case all over the place. So we've been working with. a town called Skidegate in Haida Gwaii, and they have to take an eight hour ferry ride to the mainland for ultrasounds. So it's a huge pain, and it's also economically, it's very expensive, and it has an impact on the environment as well, all this traveling, so If we can bring expert healthcare to the communities, then this would really be very beneficial.
[00:06:04] Jeevan Sangha: Can you walk us through a bit about the kinds of ultrasounds that the prototype has been used for already? As you've been testing it out, what have been the limitations or the challenges that you've had to overcome so far?
[00:06:15] David Black: We've actually done a lot of tests on how well a person can follow this kind of input. And we found that the performance is quite similar to a robot. So it's really kind of a one to one replacement almost except unlike a robot, it's inherently safe, like a, a person isn't going to do anything crazy or push too hard. Yeah. It's kind of a nice situation in this way, from a safety standpoint, it's not really a concern.
[00:06:38] In fact, usually. The novice person tends not to push hard enough because during ultrasound scan, you actually have to push surprisingly hard. We developed a communication system to obviously support this remote teleoperation. And then we also developed the kind of user interfaces on the expert and the novice side and looked at different kind of teleoperation controllers.
[00:06:59] This is kind of a very mathematical field. And then we also developed a new kind of force sensor. for the ultrasound probe. And in this way, we can actually measure what forces are being applied to the patient at any time and feed this back to the expert so that when they're moving their input device, they actually feel the force that's being applied to the patient. So for them, it's very intuitive as well. And then we also developed a system to track the position and orientation of the ultrasound probe from the headset directly without any other hardware. [00:07:30] So, this can also be used to guide the person a bit better and also to feedback to the expert. And with all this that was a lot of my PhD, a lot of technical development.
[00:07:41] But then we've done some tests on patients in hospital at UBC, and these are just kind of general abdominal scans. Last summer, we went to Skidegate, and we had the system scanning 11 patients, where the expert was actually in our lab in Vancouver, and the patients were in Skidegate, which is about 750 kilometers away. And for this we did pretty general abdominal scans. We're currently still working on, actually very close now, to having the haptics, this kind of forced feedback system, work really well. And this will enable us to do some more complicated scans, like obstetrics, for example. And you can also often scan a carotid on the neck and yeah, we're, we're aiming to make the system usable for, for any kind of ultrasound scan and potentially also for, for other applications as well.
[00:08:33] Jeevan Sangha: I'm finding it so fascinating the amount of creativity that it requires to come up with such innovative solutions. Have you, like, thought about your research as a creative practice ever, or is it something that you think of it as more like research and statistics?
[00:08:45] David Black: I think, yeah, creativity is actually super important. It's key in any kind of research. I do enjoy that in engineering, especially. You have a certain problem that you want to solve, and then you have some knowledge about tools that you can use, but ultimately it comes down to being creative and coming up with a cool solution that actually works.
[00:09:04] Definitely, I think of it as a creative process, and yeah, it's, it's quite fun, actually. I really enjoy working on it and being creative and every little, every little thing, like, you know, the things you don't think about ends up being problematic and challenging. So it just coming up with solutions for all those makes it really rewarding.
[00:09:22] Jeevan Sangha: When it comes to rolling out something like this, that's relatively new, that folks may not have thought about in this way, were you aware of some of those like smaller little hitches? Could you provide an example of what that was and how you had to creatively come up with like a different approach for how you were going to move forward with this particular system?
[00:09:43] David Black: Usually. I'm not familiar necessarily with, with the problems beforehand. And I think this is one of the most important things to learn at university when you're studying engineering is not necessarily memorize all the different facts that you learn in class, but learn how to approach a problem and how to, how to learn new things that are specific to that problem.
[00:10:03] For example, you want it to measure the forces on the ultrasound probe, like I mentioned, and we wanted to do this in a way that's really low profile so that. The expert or the follower can still hold the probe comfortably. And it also had to be low cost because this is supposed to go out to communities and be as simple as possible.
[00:10:21] And so, when confronted with this new challenge, we kind of looked at what exists, what people have already done. And we actually found that most things don't really match what we need. So you can buy off the shelf for sensors that are ultra precise and super accurate. But they're, you know, kind of bulky. And when you actually build that into a probe, it gets really bulky. And they also cost like $6000. So eventually we just came up with a completely new way to measure forces. you have two Hall Effect sensors, they're called, they measure magnetic fields, and then a magnet across from them.
[00:10:55] And if you have one attached to the probe, and one attached to a shell around the probe, and the two are connected by a sort of flexible mechanism, then if you apply a force to the The magnet moves relative to the sensors and you can actually measure the offset and then having multiple of those around the ultrasound probe allows us to calculate the deformation and a lot of different axis, and then come up with the, the force measurement.
[00:11:20] So yeah, it was a problem where existing things didn't really work out for us. So we were creative and came up with a totally new way to do it. And that actually works quite well.
[00:11:30] Jeevan Sangha: Can you talk to us about the importance of consultation with community when piloting new technologies, like the ones you've been working on?
[00:11:35] David Black: Yeah, definitely. Consulting with the people who would actually use the technology and be impacted by it is, is absolutely key.
[00:11:43] And doing so from a very early stage in the project is also important. That's something that we've been trying to do the whole time. And it's something that I definitely believe in strongly. There's a lot of projects that have, you know, great ideas and even great execution, but they kind of miss the mark [00:12:00] and don't do what's actually needed.
[00:12:02] This just doesn't work. So, having something that is actually addressing the problems that exist is super important. And even like my supervisor is super experienced in ultrasound, but when we developed the systems and then the first time we had sonographers come in and try to use it, they were so confused about a few things.
[00:12:21] And we just like literally rotated one thing, 90 degrees. And then like, Oh, I get this. This makes so much more sense. So it's, it's like really small, fine details that make a huge difference [00:12:30] huge difference. So you really have to consult from the beginning. And yeah, you definitely learn this in engineering at UBC. I think the most important thing is to just talk to them often and early and get them to try your system and try to get as much feedback as possible and everything else kind of follows from there.
[00:12:48] You also have to be open to their feedback, not just think that they're wrong and keep doing it your way. So yeah, it's, it's really actually simple. You just talk to them, but it's very important.
[00:12:58] Carol Eugene Park: this sounds really great and it's very innovative, but, you know, we're kind of in a time where a lot of people are really scared about new technologies, and they're kind of questioning so called safety measures and all that when it comes to robots and AI. I guess, how do you combat people who think that this might be a project that's a bit dangerous.
[00:13:20] David Black: To be honest, we haven't had any issues with that at all. Everyone we've talked to, everyone we've shown the system to even in very small communities, they've been just very excited to see it. With our system, the actual person doing the ultrasound scan could be, you know, a family member or a close friend, could even be the patient themselves. So it's really very. accessible and easy for, for people to accept.
[00:13:44] Carol Eugene Park: I'm just curious how you came to consider smaller communities, like, is that something that's personal to you?
[00:13:50] David Black: I'm interested in the accessibility of healthcare, partly because, as we mentioned just before starting, I was backcountry skiing earlier, like, I'm very into mountain sports and often find myself in very remote areas. And I've also experienced traveling when really sick and had to come back to Vancouver. and that's not fun at all. So, yeah, this kind of drove my interest in, in health accessibility.
[00:14:12] Jeevan Sangha: I was wondering about, like, if you've heard any stories through the process of developing this research about how life changing this would be, whether that's from folks who have been, in need of a tool like this or who have seen the value in it, like, is there anything you can share about the potential impacts of this kind of research and, and remote technology?
[00:14:30] David Black: Yeah, we've been working closely with Bella Bella and Skidegate, as I mentioned, they're pretty thrilled to have the potential for such a technology because it would save everyone so much hassle and time and money. And yeah, and it could also, we haven't really touched on emergency medicine at all, but if someone has a trauma, for example, and they need to see immediately if, if there's internal bleeding, then having an ultrasound scan at hand from an expert who's remote immediately could [00:15:00] definitely save lives, you know, tell them if they need to send them immediately to Vancouver or something. There's a lot of potential for this to have a really big impact.
[00:15:08] Jeevan Sangha: Do you have any other like big picture hopes for this kind of remote medical robotics technology, whether that's within the field itself or just more broadly with folks becoming more familiar with it?
[00:15:19] David Black: Yeah, ultimately my goal, it's obviously a very big goal and maybe I can make a small contribution towards it, but my goal would be to make healthcare Accessible to anyone to [00:15:30] achieve health equity, where anyone, no matter where they live, has the same health care and the same quality of health care so that people can, you know, get the scans that they need or get the intervention that they need, even wherever they are without having to travel.
[00:15:45] And yeah, this will obviously involve systems like ours, which is mostly for diagnostics. So it's a bit simpler than interventions. But there's also. systems that exist right now that can do interventions. Like for example, the Da Vinci robot does robot assisted surgery. You could do this remotely as well. This is kind of far away from reality because it's very expensive, a robot. So you're not going to have it in every small town, but kind of moving this direction is I think a very very important thing to achieve for us.
[00:16:16] Carol Eugene Park: It's crazy times, people. It's crazy times. So because we are an alumni UBC podcast, how has your time at UBC, undergrad or now, encouraged, inspired your pursuit in this research and, and the researcher that you have become?
[00:16:33] David Black: Well, I was really lucky to do EngPhys, I think, at UBC. This is a very broad undergrad, you learn a bit of everything, basically a bit of software, bit of mechanical, bit of electric, and then also some physics and a lot of math. So having this kind of broad basis and the ability to learn new skills fairly quickly was really valuable in all my research so far.
[00:16:54] So yeah, that was really impactful and it's a great program. If anyone's thinking about it. But in general, UBC, I think, has a very innovative atmosphere. It's also situated close to places where they would really want to use our system and there's a lot of integration with indigenous communities.
[00:17:11] Jeevan Sangha: The field of robotics is so broad and there are so many different settings that advancements like these can be applied to and I'm wondering if this particular application in the medical setting is especially inspiring to you and why?
[00:17:24] David Black: Yeah, I'm definitely very driven by the application and the idea of helping people. I don't want to make other robotics seem bad because they're technically super interesting and probably valuable. But if I were working in military or working on AIs that exist to replace people, basically, I would not be excited about it. And I probably wouldn't actually do it. So I'm really only interested in robotics for, for health care and to help people.
[00:17:51] Carol Eugene Park: So as you're thinking about steps following your PhD, what kinds of work are you considering in the field of medical robotics?
[00:17:58] David Black: Yeah, there's actually a lot of research and, and companies doing medical robotics, because there's so many different applications within medicine and also other, like not directly medicine, but also helping people, like service robotics or geriatric robotics to help older people. There's a ton actually. So I think it's fair to say that I will stay in medical robotics. There's different types of surgeries, there's orthopedics, for ophthalmology, for brain tumor surgery, there's really a ton. It's a super interesting, exciting field and I'm excited to stay in it.
[00:18:32] Carol Eugene Park: But have you been headhunted?
[00:18:33] David Black: I've had some people reach out to me, but I'm interested to finish up my research first.
[00:18:38] Carol Eugene Park: Is there a particular startup or company that you would like to join?
[00:18:41] Jeevan Sangha: Manifestation hour here at From Here Forward.
[00:18:44] David Black: Yeah, I'm definitely interested on the research side, but it's possible to do research in industry or academia. And one thing I'm definitely most interested in right now is to bring the system that we're working on right now to fruition, basically make it usable in communities, industry or academia I guess we'll see.
[00:19:04] One very exciting company in the space of medical robotics is Intuitive. They make the DaVinci robot that I mentioned earlier for surgical robotics, and they also make a number of other systems, and they're super, research focused as well. So they're, they're interested in how far they can actually take the technology. So that's always very inspiring and yeah, that seems like a great company.
[00:19:24] Carol Eugene Park: So for all that really interesting work that you've done, you won the, the Innovation Award. I guess, for you, having dedicated so much of your life to this, what did that mean receiving that award?
[00:19:36] David Black: Yeah, it was really exciting to, to receive the award. For me, it, it kind of showed that we're on the right track, and that people actually care about this, and that it could be impactful which is always really important to hear.
[00:19:49] And MITACS funds a lot of people kind of at the border between industry and academia. So a lot of startup companies and stuff, and this was really interesting too. Experience as well as we're thinking about how we can actually make this system practically used in communities, potentially through a startup or by licensing it to another company.
[00:20:10] So it was really interesting to yeah, just to be exposed to this and to get that confirmation that what we're doing actually matters.
[00:20:17] Carol Eugene Park: So you're a researcher, you're a dude who loves outdoor stuff. I feel like a lot of stuff, a lot of things to pack in a day. I'm just wondering what your morning routine looks like. Is there a person that you look towards? Do you do like a 3am wake up call? Like how do you fit so many things that you're passionate about, but you also do on the side? Because I can never, I don't have that much time, so I'm just trying to figure out what you do.
[00:20:43] David Black: I think it's nothing special, really. I I work fairly hard, I guess. I mostly work efficiently, I think. I don't really waste much time when I'm working.There's nothing very advanced, I will work in the, in the evenings and on the weekends as well, unless I'm out skiing or flying or something. And I think having the mountains here close to UBC and being able to go and play in them and be outside is really key for me. I find if I'm too busy for a few weeks to get out much, I start going crazy. So just having the mountains there allows me to work really focused and efficiently and know that there's an escape right outside our doorstep.
[00:21:23] Carol Eugene Park: Great. Well, thank you so much, David, for your time and your expertise. This is a really cool project and I can't wait to see where it goes.
[00:21:29] David Black: Yeah, thanks so much, thanks for having me again.
[00:21:33] Carol Eugene Park: So not to out Jeevan, before we hopped on a call with David, she privately texted me and said, OMG he's so young, what am I doing with my life? And as a good friend does, I responded with, you're thriving! Also you couldn't pay me to do what he does. Cause you know, success looks different and varies in its definition to everybody. So, let's hold space for Jeevan and the listeners who are rattled by how brilliant this young man is.
[00:22:00] Now that we've done that, wasn't David so cool? I mean, his work is incredibly important, but he was super humble and very down to earth, and he's an outdoor sports guy. See, like, now that I envy, because me, I am horizontal every chance she gets. What about you, Jeevan?
[00:22:17] Jeevan Sangha: Well, first of all, I sent you those texts in confidence, but anyways, yeah, I completely agree. Our conversation was so informative. I was, of course, envious of how much David has accomplished. He is really working to change things in healthcare, and I think it's so admirable he's approaching it with community in mind.
[00:22:34] Carol Eugene Park: And I think that's a great place to end off with. I hope, well, really, we should hope that we can live this year with at least 10 percent of David's passion and dedication for his work and apply that in our lives. How's that for optimism, Jeevan?
[00:22:49] Jeevan Sangha: It's perfect.
[00:22:49] Carol Eugene Park: Well, make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me @CarolEugenePark on Blue Sky.
[00:23:02] Jeevan Sangha: And me @JeevanK.Sangha on X. From Here Forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Podium Podcast Company.