Effective Visualization for Image-guided Interventions

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Augmented reality (AR), where computed models are merged with real-world data to provide enhanced visualization of one’s surroundings, is finding use in many area from architecture, gaming, education, sports and navigation. One domain where AR has a great deal of (as yet unrealized) promise, is in medicine to guide minimally-invasive therapy or drug delivery to organs inside the body. In this application, instead of exposed targets being accessed manually during an open procedure, they are approached by means of tools placed through ports in the patient’s skin. The rationale for minimally-invasive interventions (MII) is that in many cases more trauma is caused to the patient by the access route than by the therapy itself. Recent improvements in medical imaging technology have motivated the development of minimally-invasive intervention techniques, with virtual representations of organs or targets, registered to the patient, augmenting images from an endoscopic camera, an ultrasound transducer, CT or MRI acquired prior to the procedure, or various combinations of the above. The use of virtual information to augment the intra-operative image view has been the enabling factor in these procedures. This proposal seeks to develop and demonstrate appropriate AR strategies that are intuitive to use and that will enable new minimally-invasive approaches to be realized in a manner that is intuitive and acceptable to the user. AR, Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Virtuality (AV) where a virtual model is fused with additional data that may not directly re-create a realistic visual environment, have all played a part assisting interventional procedures but have not become part of mainstream surgery. The aim of this research is to demonstrate that the use of VR/AR/AV techniques, appropriately employed in an intuitive user interface, significantly lowers the cognitive load of the user, and significantly increases operator performance for minimally-invasive procedures. These ideas are described here for three representative projects, including Laparoscopic surgery, Cardiac surgery and Neurosurgery, among the spectrum of ongoing lab activities.