Audiovisual AR concepts for laparoscopic subsurface structure navigation

Fabian Joeres, David Black, Seyedsina Razavizadeh, Christian Hansen

Keywords: Augmented reality, Audio navigation, Laparoscopic surgery, Partial nephrectomy, Visualization

TL;DR: The paper presents and reports the proof-of-concept evaluation of an audiovisual augmented reality concept for surgical subsurface navigation during resection wound repair in laparoscopic partial nephrectomy.

Abstract: The identification of subsurface structures during resection wound repair is a challenge during minimally invasive partial nephrectomy. Specifically, major blood vessels and branches of the urinary collecting system need to be localized under time pressure as target or risk structures during suture placement. This work presents concepts for AR visualization and auditory guidance based on tool position that support this task. We evaluated the concepts in a laboratory user study with a simplified, simulated task: The localization of subsurface target points in a healthy kidney phantom. We evaluated the task time, localization accuracy, and perceived workload for our concepts and a control condition without navigation support. The AR visualization improved the accuracy and perceived workload over the control condition. We observed similar, non-significant trends for the auditory display. Further, clinically realistic evaluation is pending. Our initial results indicate the potential benefits of our concepts in supporting laparoscopic resection wound repair.

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