Effective Application of Mixed Reality Device HoloLens: Simple Manual Alignment of Surgical Field and Holograms

The technology used to add information to a real visual field is defined as augmented reality technology. Augmented reality technology that can interactively manipulate displayed information is called mixed reality technology. HoloLens from Microsoft, which is a head-mounted mixed reality device released in 2016, can display a precise three-dimensional model stably on the real visual field as hologram. If it is possible to accurately superimpose the position/direction of the hologram in the surgical field, surgical navigation-like use can be expected. However, in HoloLens, there was no such function. The authors devised a method that can align the surgical field and holograms precisely within a short time using a simple manual operation. The mechanism is to match the three points on the hologram to the corresponding marking points of the body surface. By making it possible to arbitrarily select any of the three points as a pivot/axis of the rotational movement of the hologram, alignment by manual operation becomes very easy. The alignment between the surgical field and the hologram was good and thus contributed to intraoperative objective judgment. By using the method of this study, the clinical usefulness of the mixed reality device HoloLens will be expanded.