How these three companies are using AR to aid medical procedures

As an important profession, surgeons, especially surgeons, need to have a wealth of professional knowledge, and also need to master precise surgical techniques, which require continuous learning and practice.

As an important profession, surgeons, especially surgeons, need to have a wealth of professional knowledge, and also need to master precise surgical techniques, which require continuous learning and practice.

Restricted by hardware and software conditions such as learning materials and surgical practice materials, it is very difficult for doctors to learn and operate surgical procedures.

Usually, interns can only learn surgical operation skills by repeatedly watching the video of the operation. Even senior surgical experts spend a lot of time carefully studying various 2D inspection images of patients to determine the best surgical plan before performing an operation.

With the gradual maturity of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, AR and VR are penetrating into patient management, medical operation and maintenance, detection and diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation and other links.

Numerous technology start-ups are applying AR technology to surgery. Through digitization and 3D technology, traditional two-dimensional image information is three-dimensionalized, making it easier and more accurate for doctors to analyze patients and perform surgical treatment.

digital visualization surgery TrueVision

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in California, TrueVision helps doctors perform microsurgery through its self-developed digital 3D visualization platform.

The intelligent, real-time, 3D visualization surgery and computer-aided guidance platform developed by the company has been patented. The system enables surgeons to record surgical procedures in 3D and stream them live, making it an entirely new teaching tool.

The company has developed a 3D guidance application for microsurgery that can improve surgical efficiency and patient outcomes. The system can be used in microsurgery, ophthalmology, and neurology, and can be integrated with a variety of application platforms and, in some cases, robotic surgery. The company has raised a total of $19.8 million in financing.

3D medical imaging technology EchoPixel

Silicon Valley company EchoPixel was founded in 2012. The company developed an interactive 3D platform that converts 2D images into 3D images that can be manipulated with a stylus, helping doctors diagnose the internal organs of patients from all angles.

These 3D images can be customized according to program requirements, and doctors can scale the images, or they can extract questionable parts of the images individually or print them on a 3D printer for further study. Thereby, the doctor can more easily find and examine the lesions in the patient’s internal organs.

The technology dramatically reduces physician consultation and preoperative preparation time, while reducing hospital and patient time and treatment costs.

In October 2017, the company completed a series A financing of US$8.5 million led by Intel, and has raised a total of US$14.3 million so far.

Augmedics, developer of surgical visualization AR system

Founded in 2014, Israeli startup Augmedics has developed xvision, an AR head-mounted Display for spine surgery that provides surgeons with X-ray vision during surgery, allowing surgeons to see through skin and tissue inside a patient’s body. Dissect for easier, faster and safer surgery.

The ViZOR system developed by the company can determine the position of surgical tools in real time, superimpose it on the patient’s CT data, and use the headset to project the data in front of the surgeon’s eyes, so as to truly see the anatomy of the patient’s body.

According to research tests, the use of xvision allows spinal screws to be placed with an accuracy of nearly 97%. The accuracy of the entire system is about 1.4 mm, which meets the requirements of the US FDA under 2 mm.

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