VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging

A special issue of Bioengineering (ISSN 2306-5354). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2023) | Viewed by 9883

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
Interests: virtual surgery; computer animation; medical visualization

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
National Centre for Computer Animation, Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK
Interests: computer graphics and computer vision; machine learning; data mining; digital health; virtual reality and mixed reality; surgery simulation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern medicine demonstrate the development trends of accuracy, minimal invasion and individualization. At present, the performance of surgery mostly depends on the surgeons’ experience and skill proficiency. This requires the development of high accuracy. Many kinds of surgeries in a variety of departments have ended the era of "large incision", and will develop in the direction of minimally invasive surgery, with small trauma, light pain and fast recovery. On the other hand, the causes and pathology of human diseases are very complex. Different patients have different symptoms. It leads to the development of individualized surgery design. The precise, minimally invasive and personalized development of medicine puts forward new requirements for the surgical skills of clinicians, and more needs to provide objective and quantitative approaches of surgical diagnosis and treatment and the process of auxiliary technical support. The solution to the problems above urgently need innovative progress and support of information technology, modern diagnosis and treatment technology. At present, digital innovations in medicine, such as surgical simulation based on virtual reality (VR), surgical planning and navigation techniques based on human 3D images and augmented reality (AR), provide new ways and solutions to solve the above problems. There is profound logic in carrying out research in related fields.

Therefore, this Special Issue on “Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Applications in Modern Medicine” will focus on original research papers and comprehensive reviews of cutting-edge techniques for virtual reality/augmented reality applications in surgical simulation, planning and navigation. Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

  • VR/AR techniques to aid in surgical simulation, planning, strategy and navigation;
  • VR/AR techniques to aid in rehabilitation;
  • VR/AR techniques to aid in surgical robot;
  • VR/AR applications in treatment of psychological diseases;
  • VR/AR applications in pain relief;
  • VR/AR applications in medical training.

Overall, this Special Issue in Bioengineering will highlight recent advances in VR/AR applications in the context of biomedical applications, ranging from fundamental science discoveries and novel technique developments to new application scenarios. The collection of these papers will cover cutting-edge research activities in this booming multidisciplinary area.

Prof. Dr. Junjun Pan
Prof. Dr. Xiaosong Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Bioengineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • virtual reality/augmented reality
  • surgical simulation
  • surgical planning and navigation
  • rehabilitation
  • surgical robot
  • medical training

Published Papers (5 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

11 pages, 8856 KiB  
Article
Augmented Reality Surgical Navigation in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery: A Preclinical Study
by Xin Huang, Xiaoguang Liu, Bin Zhu, Xiangyu Hou, Bao Hai, Dongfang Yu, Wenhao Zheng, Ranyang Li, Junjun Pan, Youjie Yao, Zailin Dai and Haijun Zeng
Bioengineering 2023, 10(9), 1094; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10091094 - 18 Sep 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1196
Abstract
Background: In minimally invasive spine surgery (MISS), where the surgeon cannot directly see the patient’s internal anatomical structure, the implementation of augmented reality (AR) technology may solve this problem. Methods: We combined AR, artificial intelligence, and optical tracking to enhance the augmented reality [...] Read more.
Background: In minimally invasive spine surgery (MISS), where the surgeon cannot directly see the patient’s internal anatomical structure, the implementation of augmented reality (AR) technology may solve this problem. Methods: We combined AR, artificial intelligence, and optical tracking to enhance the augmented reality minimally invasive spine surgery (AR-MISS) system. The system has three functions: AR radiograph superimposition, AR real-time puncture needle tracking, and AR intraoperative navigation. The three functions of the system were evaluated through beagle animal experiments. Results: The AR radiographs were successfully superimposed on the real intraoperative videos. The anteroposterior (AP) and lateral errors of superimposed AR radiographs were 0.74 ± 0.21 mm and 1.13 ± 0.40 mm, respectively. The puncture needles could be tracked by the AR-MISS system in real time. The AP and lateral errors of the real-time AR needle tracking were 1.26 ± 0.20 mm and 1.22 ± 0.25 mm, respectively. With the help of AR radiographs and AR puncture needles, the puncture procedure could be guided visually by the system in real-time. The anteroposterior and lateral errors of AR-guided puncture were 2.47 ± 0.86 mm and 2.85 ± 1.17 mm, respectively. Conclusions: The results indicate that the AR-MISS system is accurate and applicable. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging)
Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 545 KiB  
Article
Automatic Medical Report Generation Based on Cross-View Attention and Visual-Semantic Long Short Term Memorys
by Yunchao Gu, Renyu Li, Xinliang Wang and Zhong Zhou
Bioengineering 2023, 10(8), 966; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10080966 - 16 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1294
Abstract
Automatic medical report generation based on deep learning can improve the efficiency of diagnosis and reduce costs. Although several automatic report generation algorithms have been proposed, there are still two main challenges in generating more detailed and accurate diagnostic reports: using multi-view images [...] Read more.
Automatic medical report generation based on deep learning can improve the efficiency of diagnosis and reduce costs. Although several automatic report generation algorithms have been proposed, there are still two main challenges in generating more detailed and accurate diagnostic reports: using multi-view images reasonably and integrating visual and semantic features of key lesions effectively. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel automatic report generation approach. We first propose the Cross-View Attention Module to process and strengthen the multi-perspective features of medical images, using mean square error loss to unify the learning effect of fusing single-view and multi-view images. Then, we design the module Medical Visual-Semantic Long Short Term Memorys to integrate and record the visual and semantic temporal information of each diagnostic sentence, which enhances the multi-modal features to generate more accurate diagnostic sentences. Applied to the open-source Indiana University X-ray dataset, our model achieved an average improvement of 0.8% over the state-of-the-art (SOTA) model on six evaluation metrics. This demonstrates that our model is capable of generating more detailed and accurate diagnostic reports. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging)
Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 2996 KiB  
Article
High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in the Right Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Lengthens Sustained Attention in Virtual Reality
by Shan Yang, Ganbold Enkhzaya, Bao-Hua Zhu, Jian Chen, Zhi-Ji Wang, Eun-Seong Kim and Nam-Young Kim
Bioengineering 2023, 10(6), 721; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10060721 - 14 Jun 2023
Viewed by 2232
Abstract
Due to the current limitations of three-dimensional (3D) simulation graphics technology, mind wandering commonly occurs in virtual reality tasks, which has impeded it being applied more extensively. The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays a vital role in executing continuous two-dimensional (2D) mental [...] Read more.
Due to the current limitations of three-dimensional (3D) simulation graphics technology, mind wandering commonly occurs in virtual reality tasks, which has impeded it being applied more extensively. The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays a vital role in executing continuous two-dimensional (2D) mental paradigms, and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over this cortical region has been shown to successfully modulate sustained 2D attention. Accordingly, we further explored the effects of electrical activation of the rVLPFC on 3D attentional tasks using anodal high-definition (HD)-tDCS. A 3D Go/No-go (GNG) task was developed to compare the after effects of real and sham brain stimulation. Specifically, GNG tasks were periodically interrupted to assess the subjective perception of attentional level, behavioral reactions were tracked and decomposed into an underlying decision cognition process, and electroencephalography data were recorded to calculate event-related potentials (ERPs) in rVLPFC. The p-values statistically indicated that HD-tDCS improved the subjective mentality, led to more cautious decisions, and enhanced neuronal discharging in rVLPFC. Additionally, the neurophysiological P300 ERP component and stimulation being active or sham could effectively predict several objective outcomes. These findings indicate that the comprehensive approach including brain stimulation, 3D mental paradigm, and cross-examined performance could significantly lengthen and robustly compare sustained 3D attention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research

18 pages, 515 KiB  
Review
The Role of Augmented Reality in the Advancement of Minimally Invasive Surgery Procedures: A Scoping Review
by Phillipp Brockmeyer, Bernhard Wiechens and Henning Schliephake
Bioengineering 2023, 10(4), 501; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10040501 - 21 Apr 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2184
Abstract
The purpose of this review was to analyze the evidence on the role of augmented reality (AR) in the improvement of minimally invasive surgical (MIS) procedures. A scoping literature search of the PubMed and ScienceDirect databases was performed to identify articles published in [...] Read more.
The purpose of this review was to analyze the evidence on the role of augmented reality (AR) in the improvement of minimally invasive surgical (MIS) procedures. A scoping literature search of the PubMed and ScienceDirect databases was performed to identify articles published in the last five years that addressed the direct impact of AR technology on MIS procedures or that addressed an area of education or clinical care that could potentially be used for MIS development. A total of 359 studies were screened and 31 articles were reviewed in depth and categorized into three main groups: Navigation, education and training, and user-environment interfaces. A comparison of studies within the different application groups showed that AR technology can be useful in various disciplines to advance the development of MIS. Although AR-guided navigation systems do not yet offer a precision advantage, benefits include improved ergonomics and visualization, as well as reduced surgical time and blood loss. Benefits can also be seen in improved education and training conditions and improved user-environment interfaces that can indirectly influence MIS procedures. However, there are still technical challenges that need to be addressed to demonstrate added value to patient care and should be evaluated in clinical trials with sufficient patient numbers or even in systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging)
Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 614 KiB  
Review
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Plastic and Craniomaxillofacial Surgery: A Scoping Review
by Nicolas Kaplan, Mitchell Marques, Isabel Scharf, Kevin Yang, Lee Alkureishi, Chad Purnell, Pravin Patel and Linping Zhao
Bioengineering 2023, 10(4), 480; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10040480 - 17 Apr 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1905
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have evolved since their introduction to medicine in the 1990s. More powerful software, the miniaturization of hardware, and greater accessibility and affordability enabled novel applications of such virtual tools in surgical practice. This scoping review aims [...] Read more.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have evolved since their introduction to medicine in the 1990s. More powerful software, the miniaturization of hardware, and greater accessibility and affordability enabled novel applications of such virtual tools in surgical practice. This scoping review aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the literature by including all articles between 2018 and 2021 pertaining to VR and AR and their use by plastic and craniofacial surgeons in a clinician-as-user, patient-specific manner. From the initial 1637 articles, 10 were eligible for final review. These discussed a variety of clinical applications: perforator flaps reconstruction, mastectomy reconstruction, lymphovenous anastomosis, metopic craniosynostosis, dermal filler injection, auricular reconstruction, facial vascularized composite allotransplantation, and facial artery mapping. More than half (60%) involved VR/AR use intraoperatively with the remainder (40%) examining preoperative use. The hardware used predominantly comprised HoloLens (40%) and smartphones (40%). In total, 9/10 Studies utilized an AR platform. This review found consensus that VR/AR in plastic and craniomaxillofacial surgery has been used to enhance surgeons’ knowledge of patient-specific anatomy and potentially facilitated decreased intraoperative time via preoperative planning. However, further outcome-focused research is required to better establish the usability of this technology in everyday practice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VR/AR Applications in Biomedical Imaging)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop