Novel process for three-dimensional anatomy and surgical video production: a potential pedagogical tool

Medical education is an exciting area of development for virtual reality and three-dimensional video. The da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, CA) utilizes stereoscopic video to provide a three-dimensional perspective to the surgeon, and the use of this video in an educational setting may provide a more realistic experience for learners. In this paper, we introduce and describe in detail what we believe to be a novel and cost-effective way to record three-dimensional video from the da Vinci Xi robotic system. Our technique utilizes a novel approach to record high-definition stereoscopic video for hours at a time. This allows full surgeries to be captured, edited, and shared with minimal limitations. We discuss detailed methods for capturing the three-dimensional videos, formatting the videos to view within the virtual reality device, and transferring the video for viewing, both locally and over the internet. The ability to manipulate the video in this way allows the tailoring of content for specific educational uses as well as providing an outlet for more accessible three-dimensional teaching. Further studies will be done to determine if three-dimensional video formats provide any learning benefit compared to a two-dimensional format as well as exploring additional means to capture high-quality stereoscopic video.