Augmented reality in the operating theatre of the future

Abstract

While an increasing number of operation planning systems enable surgeons to preoperatively define and plan complex surgical interventions, providing these planning data intraoperatively in a reasonable way is still a challenging task. We have developed a new system using projector based augmented reality for the intraoperative visualization of preoperatively defined surgical planning data. Projector based augmented reality in medical applications represents a new field of research and yet shows results that are superior to techniques based on head mounted displays. The projector is not only used for visualization, but also for initial registration of the patient whose further movements are continuously tracked and taken into account for projection.