Existing challenges in surgical assistance and education (“See one, do one, teach one”) make it necessary to develop new ways for immersive interaction. This is also crucial for the dissemination of new technological developments, as today’s live transmissions of surgeries to remote locations always come with high information loss, e.g. stereoscopic depth perception, and limited communication channels.
This talk presents the implementation of a scalable remote solution using immersive, interactive and augmented reality elements enhancing surgical training in the operating room. The system uses a full digital surgical microscope in the context of Ear–Nose–Throat surgery. The microscope is equipped with a modular software augmented reality interface consisting an interactive annotation mode to mark anatomical landmarks using a touch device, an experimental intraoperative image-based stereo-spectral algorithm unit to measure anatomical details and highlight tissue characteristics. A bilateral audio pipeline fosters direct communication between all participants.
The new educational tool was evaluated and tested during the broadcast of three live XR-based three-dimensional cochlear implant surgeries. The system was able to scale to five different remote locations in parallel with low latency and offering a separate two-dimensional YouTube stream. In total more than 150 persons were trained including healthcare professionals, biomedical engineers and medical students.
References:
Wisotzky EL, Rosenthal JC, Meij S, van den Dobblesteen J, Arens P, Hilsmann A, Eisert P, Uecker FC, Schneider A. Telepresence for surgical assistance and training using eXtended reality during and after pandemic periods. J Telemed Telecare. 2023 Apr 24:1357633X231166226. doi: 10.1177/1357633X231166226. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37093788. Reference Link
Speakers
Eric L. Wisotzky M.Sc.
"Research Associate at Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute HHI, Berlin"
"General, Trauma & Acute Care Surgeon Portsmouth Regional Hospital"
Dr. Rafael Grossmann is a full-time general, trauma, advanced laparoscopic, and robotic surgeon. Originally from Venezuela and trained as a surgeon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he has practiced in the US for several years. He is deeply interested in the intersection of Innovation Technology in Healthcare and Medical Education. He is also an avid blogger, Healthcare Social Media user, global and TEDx speaker. It was at Exponential Medicine (FutureMed 2013)/Singularity University where his vision of a future, exponentially better care began to crystallize. He became one of the early GoogleGlass Explorers in the world, in early 2013 and was the first doctor to ever use Google Glass during live surgery. Being a healthcare futurist and a telemedicine-mHealth innovator, he is a strong believer on the power of technology to better connect providers and patients. He is convinced that innovation in healthcare technology along with the current developments in mobile and wearable platforms, AI and deep learning will exponentially disrupt and improve healthcare connectivity, communication and data flow and management, and result in a more efficient, intuitive, less expensive, and ultimately better patient care.
