Abstract
The growing availability of self-contained and affordable augmented reality headsets such as the Microsoft HoloLens is encouraging the adoption of these devices also in the healthcare sector. However, technological and human-factor limitations still hinder their routine use in clinical practice. Among them, the major drawbacks are due to their general-purpose nature and to the lack of a standardized framework suited for medical applications and devoid of platform-dependent tracking techniques and/or complex calibration procedures. To overcome such limitations, in this paper we present a software framework that is designed to support the development of augmented reality applications for custom-made head-mounted displays designed to aid high-precision manual tasks. The software platform is highly configurable, computationally efficient, and it allows the deployment of augmented reality applications capable to support in situ visualization of medical imaging data. The framework can provide both optical and video see-through-based augmentations and it features a robust optical tracking algorithm. An experimental study was designed to assess the efficacy of the platform in guiding a simulated task of surgical incision. In the experiments, the user was asked to perform a digital incision task, with and without the aid of the augmented reality headset. The task accuracy was evaluated by measuring the similarity between the traced curve and the planned one. The average error in the augmented reality tests was <; 1 mm. The results confirm that the proposed framework coupled with the new-concept headset may boost the integration of augmented reality headsets into routine clinical practice.
Highlights
The healthcare sector represents one of the most promising and fascinating fields of application for visual augmented reality (AR), with potential uses in medical education and training, surgical planning, remote surgery, robot-assisted surgery, and surgical navigation [1], [2]. in image-guided surgery, the need to integrate medical imaging into the surgical workflow has encouraged the research for new visualization modalities based on AR that could act as surgical guidance or alternatively as tool for surgical planning and/or diagnosis [3]–[6]
We describe the components and the features of the software framework that were developed in the course of the project and we unveil the most relevant properties of an early version of the custom-made hybrid video/optical see-through head-mounted displays (HMDs) that was developed and used as testing platform
Depending on the proprietary platform associated to most consumer level optical see-through (OST) HMDs, the control of the low-level rendering camera is often restricted by compatible interfaces [56]
Summary
The healthcare sector represents one of the most promising and fascinating fields of application for visual augmented reality (AR), with potential uses in medical education and training, surgical planning, remote surgery, robot-assisted surgery, and surgical navigation [1], [2]. in image-guided surgery, the need to integrate medical imaging into the surgical workflow has encouraged the research for new visualization modalities based on AR that could act as surgical guidance or alternatively as tool for surgical planning and/or diagnosis [3]–[6]. Medical imaging is commonly deployed into the operating room (OR) This is owing to the ability of AR to allow the ubiquitous enrichment of the surgical scene with computergenerated elements derived from medical datasets: AR technology is able to provide physicians with a virtual navigation aid contextually blended with the real surgical scenario (i.e., in situ) [7], [8]. This trend has been further supported by the increasing capability of mobile graphics and computing power that has led to the development of selfcontained and affordable AR headsets such as the Microsoft HoloLens, the Meta Two, and the MagicLeap One [9].
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