Augmented reality is coming to surgery rooms

Imagine if surgeons or other clinicians were able to more easily see their patients’ internal anatomy without having to cut into them. That’s the basis for an intriguing project, developed by researchers at the University of Alberta. Called ProjectDR, it’s an augmented reality system that allows medical images such as CT scans, ultrasound, X-rays, and MRI data to be displayed on an individual so that it moves along with them. “The ability to project medical images directly onto a patient’s body helps those viewing these images to recover patient-specific anatomical information in context for more accurate interpretation and action,” Pierre Boulanger, professor in the Department of Computing Science, told Digital Trends. “Using this system, patients can be digitized before the procedure, and these images can then be used as guides to perform surgeries — including the real-time location of the tools used by the surgeon relative to the projected information. The real-time aspect of the system allows this alignment to adapt to patient motion and to display video images like the one used in endoscopic surgeries.”