Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 5, 2025
Pedicle Screw Placement Using an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display in a Porcine Model
Published on: May 24, 2024
HoloYolo: A proof-of-concept study for marker-less surgical navigation of spinal rod implants with augmented reality
Marco von Atzigen1,2, Florentin Liebmann1,2, Armando Hoch1,3
1Research in Orthopedic Computer Science, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Background:
Existing surgical navigation approaches of the rod bending procedure in spinal fusion rely on optical tracking systems that determine the location of placed pedicle screws using a hand-held marker.
Methods:
We propose a novel, marker-less surgical navigation proof-of-concept to bending rod implants. Our method combines augmented reality with on-device machine learning to generate and display a virtual template of the optimal rod shape without touching the instrumented anatomy. Performance was evaluated on lumbosacral spine phantoms against a pointer-based navigation benchmark approach and ground truth data obtained from computed tomography.
Results:
Our method achieved a mean error of 1.83 ± 1.10 mm compared to 1.87 ± 1.31 mm measured in the marker-based approach, while only requiring 21.33 ± 8.80 s as opposed to 36.65 ± 7.49 s attained by the pointer-based method.
Conclusion:
Our results suggests that the combination of augmented reality and machine learning has the potential to replace conventional pointer-based navigation in the future.
