Doctors Assistive System Using Augmented Reality to Enhance Medical Operations

Abstract

Surgeons are regularly on the lookout for technologies that will enhance their operating environment. They are often the early adopters of technologies that allow their field to offer a better surgical and patient experience. The continuing enhancement of the surgical environment in the digital age has led to a number of innovations being highlighted as potential disruptive technologies in the surgical workplace. Augmented reality (AR) is rapidly becoming increasingly available, Augmented reality (AR) is a promising tool to conveniently provide needed information and may thus overcome the limitations of existing approaches. To this end, a prototypical AR application was developed to guide the insertion of needles to spinal targets using the mixed-reality glasses Microsoft HoloLens. The system’s registration accuracy was attempted to measure and three guidance visualization concepts were evaluated concerning achievable in-plane and out-of-plane needle orientation errors in a comparison study. Results suggested high registration accuracy and showed that the AR prototype is suitable for reducing out-of-plane orientation errors. AR is the addition of artificial information to one or more of the senses that allow the user to perform tasks more efficiently. We propose a system in which important information for the doctors is displayed on semi-transparent glasses included in an AR headset and therefore are mixed with the real-world view