Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

Research Partnerships
Freiberg, and Greifswald). The work carried out
at all CKIs — both in Germany and abroad — focuses
on the technological fields and markets
that Siemens deems important for the future.
For example, the CKI established at the Technical
University of Denmark in Copenhagen in the
spring of 2007 boasts extensive research expertise
in the area of renewable energy sources.
Siemens has also set up two new CKIs in Beijing
and Shanghai. In recent years, a number of
doctoral students at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University,
including several from its renowned
Computer Science Department, have aligned
their dissertations with specific Siemens re-
Image Semantics:
Theseus Medico
Researchers at Siemens Corporate Technology
are developing a platform known as Medico that
brings together all the available medical imaging
data for a specific patient, while also incorporating
information from other patients with similar
conditions.
Medico will combine medical knowledge for the
first time with new image-processing methods,
knowledge-based information processing
techniques, and machine learning technologies.
The system will thus be able to autonomously
interpret images of anatomical structures such
as bones, blood vessels, and organs, and also
recognize any abnormal changes to them. The data will then be automatically catalogued and
linked with reference images and treatment reports from several databases. Siemens experts are
focusing initially on 3D data sets from tomography devices (CT/MR) in order to close the existing
semantic gap in a predefined area between unstructured image data and medical terminology.
“Semantic” refers in this context to the ability of a computer program to understand image
content. An initial series of tests for the Medico prototype is planned for 2009 at Erlangen
University Hospital.
Medico is one of six application scenarios in Theseus, a program launched by Germany’s Ministry
of Economics and Technology that focuses on Web 3.0, which makes information content available
and understandable to computers. The program’s objective is to work with unstructured data to
develop a general method that ensures order and hierarchy in systems like Medico. Siemens’
partners in the Medico project include the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, the
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
42 Corporate Technology
search topics. And researchers at the venerable
Tongji University in Shanghai are working with
Siemens scientists on ways to bring together traditional
Chinese medicine and modern medical
technologies (see p. 8). Siemens also operates
CKIs at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in Boston and the University of
California at Berkeley. Although cooperation
with these universities is still very new, it has already
produced promising results. For example,
Siemens and the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator
Center (BSAC) are working closely together on
methods to enable carbon nanotubes to be used
in new products (see p. 43).
A partnership between Siemens and the Johannes
Kepler University of Linz, Austria, has existed
for approximately 20 years. Among other
things, the university’s Institute for Business Information
Systems/Software Engineering has
developed software that CT expanded into a
complete information system that is now being
used on campus (see p. 41).
Another joint project — Smart Home — is
looking into the application possibilities for pervasive
computing, which involves the complete
networking of all of the processors, sensors, and
network connections housed in everyday items
found in homes and offices (see p. 18).
EU Research Program:
Helping to Heal Sick Children
Very little knowledge and experience is to be
found outside of leading children’s hospitals when
it comes to treating rare diseases that affect young
people. Many doctors therefore waste valuable
time searching for experts and information in
medical emergencies involving children. The
Health-e-Child platform, a project initiated by the
European Union, can be a big help here. The
platform focuses on heart disease, infectious
diseases, and brain tumors.