Efficacy of fully 3D monomodal interface in pre-operative planning of total hip replacement

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has been applied to many industrial application fields in recent years. Due to the great improvements of computer science and to the lowering of computational costs, some specialised VR approaches have been recently proposed in medicine. The most important VR medical applications are in training and education, but VR has been also used in Computer-Aided Surgery (CAS) systems, for preoperative planning and surgical simulation. The aim of this work is to assess the accuracy of a VR interface for preoperative planning of total hip replacement (THR) based on stereoscopic display and a 6DOF tracker and compare it with the accuracy achieved by traditional mouse–monitor interfaces. The positioning accuracy achievable with the 3D interface is comparable with that achievable with an interface based on the multiplanar reformation representation, in which the patient's anatomy is visualised by means of a three-pane window showing orthogonal 2D cross sections. Using a fully 3D interface, however, the users are much more consistent and repeatable.