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Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly used in medical applications for visualizing medical information. In this paper, we present an AR-assisted surgical guidance system that aims to improve the accuracy of catheter placement in ventriculostomy, a common neurosurgical procedure. We build upon previous work on neurosurgical AR, which has focused on enabling the surgeon to visualize a patient’s ventricular anatomy, to additionally integrate surgical tool tracking and contextual guidance. Specifically, using accurate tracking of optical markers via an external multi-camera OptiTrack system, we enable Microsoft HoloLens 2-based visualizations of ventricular anatomy, catheter placement, and the information on how far the catheter tip is from its target. We describe the system we developed, present initial hologram registration results, and comment on the next steps that will prepare our system for clinical evaluations.
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NeuroLens: Augmented Reality-based Contextual Guidance through Surgical Tool Tracking in Neurosurgery
External ventricular drain (EVD) is a common, yet challenging neurosurgical procedure of placing a catheter into the brain ventricular system that requires prolonged training for surgeons to improve the catheter placement accuracy. In this paper, we introduce NeuroLens, an Augmented Reality (AR) system that provides neurosurgeons with guidance that aides them in completing an EVD catheter placement. NeuroLens builds on prior work in AR-assisted EVD to present a registered hologram of a patient’s ventricles to the surgeons, and uniquely incorporates guidance on the EVD catheter’s trajectory, angle of insertion, and distance to the target. The guidance is enabled by tracking the EVD catheter. We evaluate NeuroLens via a study with 33 medical students, in which we analyzed students’ EVD catheter insertion accuracy and completion time, eye gaze patterns, and qualitative responses. Our study, in which NeuroLens was used to aid students in inserting an EVD catheter into a realistic phantom model of a human head, demonstrated the potential of NeuroLens as a tool that will aid and educate novice neurosurgeons. On average, the use of NeuroLens improved the EVD placement accuracy of year 1 students by 39.4% and of the year 2−4 students by 45.7%. Furthermore, students who focused more on NeuroLens-provided contextual guidance achieved better results.
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- PAR ID:
- 10358172
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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