An Augmented Reality System for Operating Theatres

Over 4.7 million surgical procedures were performed in the UK in 2014, and there are over 17,000 registered surgeons in the NHS according to the Royal College of Surgeons. Medical imagery is increasingly used during the operation to guide and assist surgery, and often contains rich, detailed content. However, viewing and manipulating complex 3D imagery is fraught with difficulty, from verbally communicating the information required, to manipulating it by mouse or touch-screen, and then interpreting 3D imagery on a 2D screen. Even with trained operators this rich information can be confusing and hard to understand, and potential benefits lost. We propose a new approach that will greatly improve the visualisation of this information, overlaying the medical imagery onto the patient themselves. It will create a fusion of the real and virtual worlds to guide operations and augment them with procedural instructions to improve the workflow. Key innovations include the unique combination of hardware, dynamic optimisation of the user interface, display system and management of DICOM files.