Hacked Kinect Peers Into Your Skull

Microsoft’s motion sensing device Kinect promises new frontiers for gamers who want to play just by gesturing or speaking. Now a hacked Kinect could have more serious uses by showing everyone what your brain actually looks like under the skull, in 3D.

Using a touch screen tablet, some duct tape, brain scans, and the newest Kinect application programming interface (API) called Fusion, a team from Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK built an augmented reality system aimed at helping brain surgeons.

Ben Glocker, a post-doc researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, recently showed a prototype of the setup to IEEE Spectrum during Microsoft TechFest 2013. In the video above, he discusses how the team duct-taped a USB-powered touchscreen device to the Kinect Fusion, which allows them to 3D model just about anything.