Abstract

When performing neurosurgery on the brain, surgeons need to keep a mental map of the brain anatomy in three-dimensional space. Mixed reality offers a way to visualize and interact with these structures in an intuitive way. This thesis aims to bring research regarding different use cases for mixed reality in cranial surgery together. It proposes an augmented reality prototype for craniotomy, that captures the clinical workflow in one holistic application. The application visualizes anatomical structures of the brain extracted from imaging data and offers two planning tools. One highlights critical anatomy that could be damaged during the surgery for different incision sites. The other is used to plan a detailed path for cutting into the cranial bone. This plan can be overlain over the patient or exported into existing neuronavigation systems. The prototype was then evaluated by surgeons in a qualitative user study. Surgeons confirmed, that the application can speed up the planning process, as well as enable surgeons to perform more optimal and precise cranial neurosurgery.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

Conclusion

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