January 1, 2024 | Duke I3T Lab's collaboration with Duke Neurosurgery appearing in Neurosurgical Focus special issue on MR in Neurosurgery
External ventricular drain (EVD) placement is a “classical” example of where intra-operative augmented-reality (AR) assistance can aid surgeons in reaching their target. While earlier work on AR-assisted EVD placement only helped after the skull opening was already drilled, our recent study led by Dr. Joshua Jackson extends AR navigation to the often-overlooked craniostomy step itself. Using a HoloLens 2 headset tracked by an OptiTrack system, we project a patient-specific ventricular hologram and ideal drill path directly into the surgeon’s view, letting users steer the twist-drill in real time. In benchtop trials on 3-D-printed skull phantoms the AR-guided drill hole consistently set up a straighter, more accurate catheter channel, and participants praised the system’s intuitive “heads-up” feedback. We have summarized our findings in a paper that is appearing in Neurosurgical Focus special issue on Mixed Reality in Neurosurgery.
[Eom24Mixed] S. Eom, T. Ma, N. Vutakuri, T. Hu, A. P. Haskell-Mendoza, D. W. Sykes, M. Gorlatova, J. Jackson. Mixed Reality-Guided Twist-Drill Craniostomy Improves the Accuracy of External Ventricular Drain Placement. Neurosurgical Focus, special issue on Mixed Reality in Neurosurgery. Vol. 56, No. 1, Jan. 2024. Paper PDF: https://thejns.org/focus/view/journals/neurosurg-focus/56/1/article-pE1…
Great thanks to Thomas Lord Foundation and National Science Foundation for supporting this research.