Meet the ISCAS members…

by Dohi Takeyoshi, ISCAS honorary member

I received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering from the University of Tokyo, in 1972, 1974, and 1977, respectively. After a brief research fellowship with the Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo, I joined Tokyo Denki University, in 1979, as Lecturer. Between 1981 and 1988, I became an Associate Professor with the University of Tokyo in Precision Machinery Engineering. Further, I held a full professor position there from 1988 to 2012. I am currently full Professor at Tokyo Denki University.

I was privileged to be elected as the President of International Society for Computer Aided Surgery (ISCAS), the President of The Japan Society of CAS, the President of Asian Society for CAS, and the President of The Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering. Most recently, I was elected as a MICCAI fellow of Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) society in September 2009.

I have performed research and development in medical devices from my time as a graduate student. Although I began studying surgical robotics in 1981, I re-focused my research in 1986 towards computer-aided surgery, namely integrating robotics with a true three-dimensional image display. I continue to strongly support ISCAS as one of its founding members. At the beginning it was beyond my expectation that worldwide researchers would increasingly gather to discuss the conception of devices, which actually save millions of patients on a daily basis. My vision within the next decade is that the development of surgical devices will enable timely surgical treatment with minimal repercussion to the patient body and recovery time.

My hope is that new ISCAS members contribute to create simple and smaller mechanisms that would enable futuristic and highly performing surgical device development.

Dohi Takeyoshi, PhD is a professor for Precision Machinery Engineering at the University of Tokyo. He is a founding member and was a president of the International Society of Computer Aided Surgery (ISCAS).