Emerging Applications of Virtual Reality in Cardiovascular Medicine

Recently, rapid development in the mobile computing arena has allowed extended reality technologies to achieve performance levels that remove longstanding barriers to medical adoption. Importantly, head-mounted displays have become untethered and are light enough to be worn for extended periods of time, see-through displays allow the user to remain in his or her environment while interacting with digital content, and processing power has allowed displays to keep up with human perception to prevent motion sickness. Across cardiology, many groups are taking advantage of these advances for education, pre-procedural planning, intraprocedural visualization, and patient rehabilitation. Here, we detail these applications and the advances that have made them possible.