A Realistic Test and Development Environment for Mixed Reality in Neurosurgery

Abstract

In a mixed reality visualization, physical and virtual environments are merged to produce new visualizations where both real and virtual objects are displayed together. In image guided surgery (IGS), surgical tools and data sets are fused into a mixed reality visualization providing the surgeon with a view beyond the visible anatomical surface of the patient, thereby reducing patient trauma, and potentially improving clinical outcomes. To date few mixed reality systems are used on a regular basis for surgery. One possible reason for this is that little research on which visualization methods and techniques are best and how they should be incorporated into the surgical workflow has been done. There is a strong need for evaluation of different visualization methods that may show the clinical usefulness of such systems. In this work we present a test and development environment for augmented reality visualization techniques and provide an example of the system use for image guided neurovascular surgery. The system was developed using open source software and off-the-shelf hardware.