Procedural Training

The manner by which physicians are trained in medical procedures has been summarized by the mantra “see one, do one, teach one” for many years.  While this is the way the majority of physicians learned how to do procedures such as central venous catheterization, thoracentesis, paracentesis, lumbar punctures, etc., it is becoming grossly apparent that learning in this way is inefficient and can sometimes be dangerous to patients.  Complications arising from standard medical procedures are the cause of an enormous amount of morbidity to patients and result in a great financial cost to society.  Numerous studies have shown that complication rates decrease as operator proficiency improves.  Until now the only way of gaining such experience was for junior physicians to practice directly on patients. 

VR technologies have now reached a previously unattainable level of quality and cost effectiveness and offer distinct advantages in procedural training.  Procedures such as central venous catheterization have traditionally been learned directly on patients during residency training.  Through the use of an advanced VR simulator training can be first honed away from the bedside.  VR-based procedural training simulators are likely to substantially improve trainee competence in performance of medical and surgical procedures leading to decreases in complication rates and greater procedural efficiency.

3D Diagnostic Imaging

3D imaging is emerging as a unique and valuable tool in several areas of medicine including ultrasound, echocardiography, computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).  A major limitation of current 3D imaging techniques is that although image data is collected in three dimensions, displaying the images on a monitor flattens them to a 2D screen.  Even viewing acquired 3D images on stereoscopic flat panel monitors is not ideal because of limited viewing angles and distances and lack of an immersive feel to the viewer.  Ideally, new visualization techniques that combine a tracking device or custom navigation interface will display images in full acquired 3D resolution, making the 3D object appear to float in front of the viewer.

Procedural Guidance

The tremendous medical and societal need for reducing complications from medical procedures provides a unique opportunity to improve existing procedural medicine by combining image guidance of procedures with state-of-the-art visualization techniques.  Although image guidance of procedures has been shown to reduce complications, a principal limitation of current guidance techniques is that their use requires an operator to look away from the patient to view images on a traditional monitor.  The need for operators to take their eyes off the patient, look away to a monitor, then look back at the insertion site, dramatically decreases the efficiency and effectiveness of current image guidance technology.  The ability to simultaneously visualize a patient’s surface landmarks and real time images of underlying anatomy will dramatically increase the utility and effectiveness of procedural image guidance.

Pre-Procedure Planning

Advanced AR techniques can be used to improve pre-procedure planning by superimposing the patient’s own internal anatomic images directly on the outside of the patient’s body.  For example:  a surgeon can choose the optimal approach for resection of a cancerous tumor before ever cutting the skin using AR techniques.  By utilizing radiological images of the tumor and surrounding structures overlaid on the patient’s body, the surgeon can actually see the target area inside the patient’s body.  Optimal approaches for vascular access in venous, arterial and cardiac procedures can also be identified using a similar approach.  AR-enhanced pre-procedure planning will likely lead to significant decreases in complication rates associated with medical and surgical procedures by allowing physicians to plan their approach using their patient’s actual anatomy. 

Medical Head Mounted Displays

Development of state-of-the-art head mounted displays (HMDs) is the imaging display backbone of 3001 MEDICAL.  HMDs allow users to see a computer generated image that can either be monoscopic (same image both eyes) or stereoscopic (different images for each eye) which combine to create a 3D image.  The ultimate goal of an HMD is to replace or enhance a user’s normal vision with a computer generated image.  3001 MEDICAL provides high quality, lightweight, monoscopic and stereoscopic HMDs for medical applications.  

Tracking Systems

3001 MEDICAL utilizes fixed point sourced object and head tracking systems and sourceless wireless gyro trackers.  3001 MEDICAL incorporates specifically designed tracking systems into HMDs for image guidance applications where the ability to be able to naturally look around a 3D object is a requirement.

Input Controls

Previous input technologies required custom circuitry and software to enable communication between peripherals and CPU’s.  With the development of USB interfaces and keyboard encoders, 3001 MEDICAL has high quality, low cost “plug and play” input devices for VR applications.  Using these simple devices for input control of a computer program reduces the time to market of new products.

Electronic control systems

As medical device software changes or operating systems are updated, 3001 MEDICAL simply creates new program scripts which can serve the same function in any version of the operating system.  3001 MEDICAL has programming expertise fully available for development of specialized interfaces for existing systems.  By adapting existing technology for use with specialized VR hardware, the benefits of VR technology can be fully realized immediately.

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