Fully immersive virtual reality for skull-base surgery: surgical training and beyond

Area of Science:

• Neurosurgery
• Medical Simulation
• Virtual Reality Technology

Background:

• Cadaveric training for skull-base surgery is expensive and limited in scalability.
• Objective skill assessment in surgery is challenging with traditional methods.
• Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising avenue for surgical training and assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Fully Immersive Virtual Reality System (FIVRS) for skull-base surgery training.
• To combine advanced surgical simulation software with high-fidelity hardware for realistic surgical practice.
• To enable objective skill assessment through digitized surgical data collection.

Main Methods:

• FIVRS integrates realistic bone ablation using advanced rendering and drilling algorithms.
• A head-mounted display mimics surgical microscope ergonomics for enhanced immersion.
• Multi-modal data, including eye gaze, motion, force, and video, are recorded for post-analysis.
• A user-friendly interface is incorporated to reduce the learning curve.

Main Results:

• Preliminary user study data from surgeons of varying expertise levels show FIVRS can differentiate skill levels.
• The system's ability to collect objective metrics shows promise for future automatic skill assessment research.
• Participants provided positive informal feedback regarding the system's intuitiveness and immersiveness.

Conclusions:

• FIVRS is a fully immersive VR system designed for skull-base surgery.
• The system combines realistic simulation software with modern hardware for an enhanced training experience.
• FIVRS is open-source and outputs comprehensive data in standard formats.