IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017 - 10

2017 ieee medals

IEEE Founders Medal

IEEE Medal for Innovations in
Healthcare Technology

Sponsored by the IEEE Foundation

Sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in
Medicine and Biology Society

Takeo Kanade

Yulun Wang

For pioneering and seminal contributions to
computer vision and robotics for automotive
safety, facial recognition, virtual reality, and
medical robotics

For pioneering contributions to
remotely operated surgical robots and
telemedicine devices

Shaping the field of computer vision since its infancy, Takeo
Kanade, beginning with his Ph.D. thesis in 1973 on computer face
recognition, has demonstrated the real-world value of robotics to
industries ranging from automotive to medical with concepts often ahead of their time. It was Kanade's pioneering work since the
mid 1980s that paved the way for today's driverless cars with one
of the first demonstrations of robotics technology for a driverless
vehicle. He incorporated computer vision systems and other sensors to detect lane lines and other cars and to control both steering and speed automatically. This culminated in 1995 with the
NavLab autonomous land vehicle, which drove 3,000 miles across
the United States under autonomous control. Kanade's impact on
medicine can be seen in his early image overlay system that gave
surgeons X-ray-like vision in visualizing anatomic structures inside a patient. It was one of the first systems to demonstrate what
is now commonly referred to as medical augmented reality, and
this work was closely related to his development of the HipNav
surgical navigation system for orthopedics research. In what he
calls virtualized reality, Kanade developed the EyeVision camera
system, in which a camera operated by one person drives 30 additional remote cameras to enable three-dimensional freeze-frame
views of an activity. The successful debut of EyeVision at Super
Bowl XXXV in 2001 brought enormous attention to computer
vision and spurred research in the field. To address his lifelong
passion for developing robotics to assist people in their everyday
activities, Kanade led the creation of Quality of Life Technology
Center at Carnegie Mellon University to help develop intelligent
systems to transform the lives of people with disabilities or reduced capabilities due to aging.
An IEEE Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of
Engineering, Kanade is the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University
Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

The innovations of Yulun Wang concerning remotely operated
surgical robots and his development and application of telemedicine systems have improved the quality of healthcare around the
world, providing care to patients who otherwise would not have
access and lowering the costs of treatment. Pursuing his vision
that surgical robotic tools could enable surgeons to perform procedures with increased dexterity and control compared to conventional hand-held instruments, Wang brought medical robots
to mainstream research and development and established the role
of the surgical robot for minimally invasive surgery. Surgical robots provide the advantages of precision, smaller incisions, decreased blood loss, less pain, and quicker healing time for patients
undergoing robotic-assisted surgeries. Wang invented the Automated Endoscopic System for Optical Positioning (AESOP). AESOP is a voice-controlled robotic arm that can hold and move a
laparoscope for a surgeon, and it was the first FDA-cleared surgical robot. He also developed the ZEUS robotic surgical system,
which performed the world's first trans-Atlantic surgery. Many
of the technical innovations developed for ZEUS were incorporated into the very popular da Vinci surgical robot. To improve
patient access to quality treatment and to fight the rising costs of
healthcare,Wang created the first remote-presence robotic system
to enable a clinician to be in two places at one time to perform
medical triaging, diagnosis, and consultations from a distance. He
applied this system to a tele-stroke treatment network in which
a hub hospital places remote presence robots in smaller spoke
hospitals to provide these hospitals and their patients with access
to stroke specialists who can remotely examine and care for stroke
victims.Wang's telemedicine system has also been used for intensive care and psychiatric clinical consults. The surgical robotics
and telemedicine innovations that Wang helped to develop have
now benefited several million patients-and are continuing to
help over a million patients every year.
A member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and
recipient of the 2005 Innovation Award from the American Telemedicine Association, Wang is chairman and founder of InTouch
Health, Goleta, CA, USA.

Scope: For outstanding contributions in the leadership, planning,
and administration of aﬀairs of great value to the electrical and
electronics engineering profession.

Scope: For exceptional contributions to technologies and applications benefitting healthcare, medicine, and the health sciences.

10 | 2017 IEEE awards bOOkLET

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017