Virtual Reality for Surgical Planning - Evaluation Based on Two Liver Tumor Resections

Area of Science:

• Medical imaging and visualization
• Surgical planning and simulation
• Virtual reality applications in medicine

Background:

• Preoperative surgical planning is crucial for patient safety and minimizing surgery time.
• Current methods rely on surgeons creating mental 3D models from 2D images, which is challenging and has inherent uncertainties.
• Virtual reality (VR) offers superior spatial understanding through stereoscopic displays, ideal for patient-specific 3D organ models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a VR surgical planning tool for enhanced understanding of patient-specific 3D organ models.
• To assess the usability, usefulness, and impact of VR on surgical teams' comprehension of 3D anatomical structures.
• To investigate the potential of VR to improve surgical outcomes and patient safety.

Main Methods:

• A VR surgical planning prototype was developed using a standard VR setup.
• The prototype was used by four surgeons for preoperative planning in two real liver tumor cases.
• Semi-structured interviews were conducted before and after surgery to gather feedback on benefits and challenges.

Main Results:

• Surgeons spent an average of 14.3 minutes planning cases in VR, reporting good usability.
• VR planning led to improved spatial understanding of individual anatomy and better identification of anatomical variants.
• Surgeons reported enhanced information recall and improved identification of surgically relevant structures, suggesting potential for improved surgery and patient safety.

Conclusions:

• VR surgical planning offers significant benefits for surgeons by enhancing spatial comprehension and anatomical detail.
• The developed VR tool demonstrates potential to improve surgical planning accuracy and patient safety.
• Further investigation into VR's impact on surgical teams and patient outcomes is warranted.