Michael J Barrow

Me Circa 2018

Hello, I’m Michael Barrow, a researcher currently based in San Diego California.

I have many interests but recently I have been focusing on medical technology applications. In particular my PhD thesis has focused on novel computationally efficient surgical image guidance. Right now I’m at a turning point in my work. Looking ahead I am exploring other applications of technology to medicine and social problems. Although some exciting projects are on the horizon, I am certainly open to  interesting opportunities in my areas of interest and expertise.

Below are some selected research projects I’ve worked on

Vision Chip

I worked on a novel computer vision hardware accelerator designed to “Register” 3D surfaces in real time. Real time 3D surface registration is useful for tracking soft object surfaces over time (for example tissue in surgical procedures). This used hardware-software co-design to implement a novel “TRW-S” based global registration.

Here is the Vision Chip publication

Educational Research

Previously I was co-director and helped develop curriculum for the Early Scholars Research Program (ERSP). ERSP is a novel undergraduate program aiming to retain Computer Science majors identified as “at risk” of not matriculating. ERSP focuses on Under Represented Minorities which have higher attrition rates.

Here is the ERSP publication

Surgical Computer Vision Dataset

Some ERSP students (see above) and I worked to create a data set of canned surgical 3D video. The intended use case was to aid in developing high quality algorithms for accurate Mixed Reality image guidance in surgery.

Here is the Data Set publication

CMOS Sensor Research

Prior to my PhD, I worked on a hardware image compression energy reduction technique for image sensors. The work focused on novel near sensor computing techniques to reduce the energy cost of image acquisition in mobile devices.

Here is the CMOS Sensor publication