Surgical Magnification Glasses with Augmented Reality

Background: During cardiac surgery, surgeons need to assimilate a plethora of data and communicate with the team about it, while performing complex procedures. Although modern operating rooms are equipped with multiple monitors displaying standard parameters like vital signs, other information such as heart-lung-machine procedural data are not visible for the surgeon. When needed, it requires intense communication efforts, often leading to distraction and interruption of the procedure. To bridge the gap between information needs, communication, and display possibilities we develop a novel surgical magnifying glass with augmented reality (AR) functionality. With this glass it is possible to visualize surgeon-authored data in a non-disturbing way.

Method: We develop novel AR magnification glasses with a 25-Hz OLED micro display to visualize data directly in the loupes. The AR functionality is designed to display contextual information such as alphanumerical values and icons at fixed (but definable) positions. The glasses itself are designed as thin clients without mentionable processing capacities. All contents to be visualized are pre-rendered and send to the glasses for displaying them in the so-called corona, which is the shadowed area between magnification area and the contextual view. The client-server setup helps keeping the magnification glasses lightweight, comfortable, and it will be energy efficient during long surgeries. As a base station, we develop a small and portable device on a Raspberry Pi basis. This station communicates using novel open standards and frameworks such as IEEE 11073 (SDC) and Vue.js to ensure open transparent device connectivity and data visualization. Surgeons can decide about the information required for a certain procedure and configure the view according to their needs.

Results: The system consists of magnifying glasses with AR-functionality and a base station, which serves as central interface between medical devices. The base station receives intraoperative data via Wi-Fi and generates pre-rendered visualizations, which are then sent to the AR display via Bluetooth.

Conclusion: The introduced system may help to improve peri-procedural safety and outcome of complex cardiac operative procedures, by allowing for enhanced information autonomy of the surgeon. A high degree of individualization regarding data management and data visualization may allow increasing user acceptance and decreasing potential distraction. Further studies are needed to evaluate user acceptance and operability.

No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
03 February 2022