Holographic technology in the medical field

Holograms for healthcare

Throughout history, health professionals have had to adapt to different progressions when it comes to medical education.

Nowadays, the medical field has their fair share of challenges regarding new teaching methods. Finding new ways for students and professionals to use in order to learn about human anatomy is crucial to save lives and to improve the existing treatments. Technological advances have grown exponentially to keep up with current trends and needs of patients, but as well the needs of health care specialists.

Companies are more aware than ever that they have to come together with health professionals in order to provide the best medical advances to use as teaching tools.

Holographic simulation of surgical tools

Doctors saving someone's live. At least, we hope.

The Department of Otolaryngology is home of Melbourne University’s Virtual Reality Surgical Simulation laboratory. This group, that brings together researchers from the Faculties of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, Engineering and Education, seeks to define the role of simulation in surgical training. Virtual reality (VR) surgery is the way in which surgeons of tomorrow will be taught. VR surgery involves immersion into a 3D world where the “patient” can be touched and operated on.

As researchers and medical companies around the world are looking for new solutions for teaching, explaining and preparing medical operation, we developped a special application with a leading actor for this sector. This company is manufacting high-end medical devices and equipment such as surgical implants for the repair of the spine in case of fractures or the treatment of chronic back pain (Radiofrequency is used for demyelination, a non-destructive operation which temporarily inhibits the transmission of pain on a nerve).

These procedures are incredibly meticulous and complicated. Just one surgery needs several stages and it will be different according to the place where the procedure will take place along the spine.

Medical uses

Taking all of these aspects into account, we have worked together in order to create a hologram for the presentation of their products and solutions. We created a 3D representation of an accurate anatomic model with the possibility of zooming in on each vertebrae and interacting with them in order to show the access zones for the surgeries.

Holographic simulation of a skeleton in order to present surgery devices

Information layers are shown to display major nerves and arteries in order to explain how the tools can be adapted to each situation. This hologram is displayed on an Iris 32 display using a vertical setup. With its custom made transport case and easy to set-up wireless control, it has already been brought on multiple events around Europe to showcase our client's know-how.

Our end goal is to fully enrich this experience with complete step-by-step animation of the surgeries. In special cases, surgeons can even find and adapt more serious-games to make the learning experience substantially deeper.

3D Simulation as training material could have many more use case in other fields and industries with this real-time rendering motor. We hope to create soon new applications for cultural heritage and industrial solutions.