Virtual Reality Potential Surgical Application

The potential application of virtual reality goes far beyond gaming and entertainment! We’d imagine it won’t take long for the mass majority of people, who is, for now, somewhat reluctant to pay more and closer attention to virtual and augmented reality, simply because they’ve assumed, that the VR technology could only be applied on immersive gaming and to produce virtual entertainment experiences, to eventually catch up and realize, that the VR technology could be a firm stepping stone for the greater leap of mankind in every aspect of our lives, and VR technology’s boundless potential is going to soar far beyond all the more commonly known applications!

NeuroTouch: A Powerful Virtual Surgery Simulator

Virtual reality is currently being applied in medical and surgical fields. The NeuroTouch is a virtual surgery simulator. It uses sterovision and bimanual tool handles with force feedback. NeuroTouch Cranio is currently able to simulate four scenarios include microdissection, tumour, debulking and hemostasis.

If doctors are able to rehearse and simulate the complicated surgical process before performing the actual surgery, we’d safely assume, that it could significantly decrease the potential rate of failure! This would save many lives and broken hearts of their family!

NeuroTouch is now three years old and being used in surgical training and studies. This is a fantastic and inspiring news, because an intricate surgery such as brain tumor removal is particularly challenging to even well-trained and experienced doctors. A single, tiny mistake damaging surrounding nerves or tissues in human brain could cause permanent and severe damage.

As we can see from the Microsoft Handpose demo, the hand tracking is real-time and precise. Huge technological improvement being made by Microsoft Research Team!

Microsoft Handpose Could Be Applied Beyond Gaming

Microsoft Research Team is introducing a new technology called Handpose. Handpose is a real time articulated hand tracker that could open new doors for human and computer real-time interaction. Handpose can accurately reconstructs complex hand poses across a variety of subjects using only a single depth camera. Microsoft Research Team will presenting a demo at Computer Human Interaction Conference from this week till April 23rd.

Our Imagined Scenario For Handpose and NeuroTouch Application

We imagined the following scenario could happen in the near future! A young rookie brain surgeon who is going to perform his first ever brain surgery. The surgery is scheduled on Monday morning at 9am, which is tomorrow! He is extremely nervous, so he spent hours to practice and rehearse the simulated surgery on NeuroTouch, several times until he feels confident.

The next morning, he went into the operation room fully prepared! Put on his surgical suit, cleaned and sanitized his hands, put on his Oculus Rift Goggle and Handpose handtracking device which syncs with a robotic precision surgical arm made by Da Vinci that could implement ultra precise hand simulation tasks that prevents human mistake. The operation involves removing a brain tumor and reconstruct the wounds with 3D printed artificial artery and stem cell.

Would you prefer a robot or a human to perform surgery? Or better yet, a well-trained doctor teams up with a robot to deliver a flawless surgery! Wouldn’t that be nice!

During the surgical process, information and metrics such as the patient’s fluctuating brain waves, blood pressure, heart beat rate would pop up in the doctor’s virtual view. The real-time update reduces the time the doctor would normally need to react to various emergency situations. The surgery went well and nearly flawless, end of story, a happy ending!

Hoping For A Greater Future Fueled By Virtual Reality

This was just our imagination, but it might just come true in the near future. As we can see anything is possible with virtual reality! Am I too hopeful? Maybe! But we are looking forward to it! For me personally, I would much prefer a rookie doctor rehearses the procedure with virtual reality equipment before operating on me!

Source: http://www.vrs.org.uk, http://www.livescience.com, http://www.davincisurgery.com/