VR for Planning and Intraoperative Support

Abstract

The medical training systems we have discussed so far are based on generic data processing and depiction, mostly without the need to refer to individual patient data and individual situations. However, there are numerous medical tasks and applications that require patient-specific data, for instance, to support patient individual diagnosis and therapy. This chapter presents examples of medical VR applications dealing with individual patient-specific data. Most of these examples deal with surgical applications. In the first subsection we present different systems, where concrete patient imaging data are applied for the planning of individual surgical treatments prior to the intervention. In the remaining two subsections we overview applications, where patient imaging data are used to support a surgical treatment during the intervention. In those latter subsections the term Augmented Reality (AR) plays a relevant role and will be explained in detail.