Is Overlain Display a Right Choice for AR Navigation? A Qualitative Study of Head-Mounted Augmented Reality Surgical Navigation on Accuracy for Large-Scale Clinical Deployment

Jian Ye ¹, Qingwen Chen ², Tao Zhong ²

⁰Department of Neurosurgery, Affiliated Qingyuan Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan People's Hospital, Qiangyuan, China.

Cns Neuroscience & Therapeutics +

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January 16, 2025

View abstract on PubMed

Summary

Head-mounted augmented reality surgical navigation (HMARSN) systems with overlain display (OD) are not ready for widespread clinical use. Their system accuracy is highly variable and user-dependent, making them unreliable for surgical procedures.

Area Of Science

Medical Technology
Surgical Navigation
Augmented Reality

Background

Head-mounted augmented reality surgical navigation (HMARSN) systems are increasingly used in surgery.
Overlain display (OD) HMARSN systems offer intuitive views but have accuracy challenges.
System accuracy is critical but difficult to measure objectively in HMARSN.

Purpose Of The Study

To qualitatively review experimental OD HMARSN systems.
To investigate the impact of overlain display on system accuracy.
To assess the suitability of OD HMARSN for large-scale clinical deployment.

Main Methods

Systematic literature search of PubMed and ScienceDirect.
Analysis of 60 selected papers on HMARSN systems.
Focus on accuracy definition, measurement, stability, and competitiveness.

Main Results

OD HMARSN system accuracy is significantly impacted by user-specific eye-to-surgical-field transformations.
These transformations are individualized, user-dependent, and potentially unstable during surgery.
Current OD HMARSN systems exhibit variable accuracy compared to commercial systems.

Conclusions

OD HMARSN system accuracy is compromised by subjective and unstable spatial transformations.
The user-dependent nature of accuracy measurements hinders reliability.
OD HMARSN systems are currently not suitable for large-scale clinical implementation.

Keywords:

accuracy augmented reality head‐mounted human factor overlain display transformation user‐dependent