[Interactive augmented reality systems : Aid for personalized patient education and rehabilitation]

During patient education, information exchange plays a critical role both for patient compliance during medical or rehabilitative treatment and for obtaining an informed consent for an operative procedure.

In this article the augmented reality system "Magic Mirror" as an additive tool during patient education, rehabilitation as well as anatomical education is highlighted.

The Magic Mirror system allows the user of the system to inspect both a detailed model of the 3‑dimensional anatomy of the human body and volumetric slice images in a virtual mirror environment.

First preliminary results from the areas of rehabilitation and learning anatomy indicate the broad potential of the Magic Mirror. Similarly, the system also provides interesting advantages for patient education situations in comparison to traditional methods of information exchange.

Novel technologies, such as augmented reality are a door opener for many innovations in medicine. In the future, patient-specific systems, such as the Magic Mirror will be used increasingly more in areas such as patient education and rehabilitation. In order to maximize the benefits of such systems, further evaluation studies are necessary to find out about the best use cases and to start an iterative optimization process of these systems.