A company is exploring how augmented reality could transform surgery which could lower risk involved in operations.
Product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants is using Microsoft’s HoloLens headset to develop an AR surgical system that equips surgeons with “X-ray vision”.
This vision will make it possible to see inside a patient in real time while operating through minimally invasive openings. The new system also uses data visualisation to give surgeons easy access to patient records and operating information while they work.
Cambridge Consultants hopes to also improve keyhole surgery with the AR system as it provides a real-time 3D interactive perspective of the inside of the patient, and helps to guide the surgeon.
Simon Karger, the head of surgical and interventional products at Cambridge Consultants, said: “AR has the potential to fundamentally change the surgical experience by giving the surgeon a new dimension of information in an easy-to-use way”.
Earlier this month a Finnish research firm believed it had come up with a way of using the HoloLens on the International Space Station, meaning that astronauts could gain access to real-time data that would usually be out of reach.
This would be through visual representations of telemetry data from the station and on the ground which include fault diagnostics, radiation and temperature readings.