Virtual Reality Platform Helps Create Surgical Plans

An innovative 360-degree virtual reality (VR) technology allows surgeons to walk inside their patients' anatomy and create a surgical plan.

The Surgical Theater (Mayfield Village, OH, USA) Precision VR medical visualization platform is designed to work on multiple levels of interaction with the aid of the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headsets. The VR models are constructed and rendered based upon CT and MRI scans, culminating in a patient-specific 360° virtual tour which can be used to create an intuitive, immersive approach to patient engagement, surgical planning, resident in training education, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Neurosurgeons can navigate their patients’ anatomy and simulate complex operations before making an incision and residents can hone their surgical techniques and situational awareness of the patient’s brain anatomy, optimizing performance and skill before entering the operating room. Other applications include spine, ENT, thoracic, cardiac, and gastrointestinal applications. An Enterprise solution enables hospitals to achieve deployment on a system-wide scale, including satellite locations, while complying with security policies, with all 360° VR cases stored in the hospital's data center.

“Our Precision VR Enterprise Solution is providing 360-degree images that allow patients and surgeons to walk inside the CT and MRI, which has been proven to provide better communication of medical information between surgeons and patients and surgeons and their peers,” said Moty Avisar, CEO and co-founder of Surgical Theater. “This ‘walk-in’ experience is now available on a system-wide-scale, enhancing efficiency in the consultation and surgical planning workflow for multiple specialties.”

“The scalability of the Enterprise Solution integrates seamlessly into a hospital's existing workflow, enabling VR to be accessible anywhere, anytime,” said Chris Gough, general manager of Health & Life Sciences at Intel Corporation. “Intel and Surgical Theater have a strong partnership for bringing virtual and augmented reality solutions to healthcare, and we are delighted that the Enterprise Solution is now available for the European market.”

VR technology provides an immersive, multisensory, and 3D environment that enables users to have modified experiences of reality by stimulating the visual, auditory, and proprioception senses. VR has already been used to help treat anxiety disorders, support physical rehabilitation, and distract patients during wound care.

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