Harnessing VR Technology To Transform Medical Care

As surgeons at a leading medical facility, the medical team at UKB is tasked with performing a wide variety of complicated and challenging surgical procedures. In the field of thoracic surgery—which operates on organs within the chest, including the heart, lungs and esophagus—procedures demand immense precision and accuracy.

Planning for such surgeries in 3D has significant benefits. The combination of Medicalholodeck and CloudXR allows medical teams to reduce the amount of necessary hardware and expenses. Now the only hardware users require is their preferred VR headset and a stable internet connection.

Dr. Arensmeyer and Dr. Feodorovici integrated VR technology into their regular surgery lectures, where students were able to interact with recreations of complex medical images in a 3D virtual world.

Incorporating VR into the training process allowed both experienced surgeons and students to better prepare for diverse challenges with high-performance visualization. Medicalholodeck’s integration with CloudXR opens up a world of new possibilities while reducing costs at the same time.

Medicalholodeck uses integrated AI to reconstruct Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images and videos – such as CT and MRI scans. A major benefit of this real-time reconstruction for surgeons is that they don’t have to import or change the environment. Performing real-time reconstruction for large datasets requires immense GPU power. The team at UKB uses NVIDIA A40 GPUs in a Supermicro system configured and deployed with the support of NVIDIA ELITE partner SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH to power the heavy VR workflows.

With CloudXR set up on the hospital’s campus, all physicians train with the original data in a high-performance environment, with no latency. “This unique on-premise medical XR cloud solution is developed considering Germany’s highest data security and data privacy standards,” mentioned Dr. Feodorovici.

Surgeons can easily connect with students from any place at any time, and they can teach techniques based on real patients' 3D data in a fully immersive virtual environment.

“For real time surgical training, you need high-quality GPUs to be used for the immersive experience,” said Dr. Arensmeyer. “By using CloudXR, we can get access to the highest fidelity environments, running on the highest quality A40 GPUs. And CloudXR allows little to no latency, which is critical because it helps surgeons be fully immersed in their virtual surgery.”

By running Medicalholodeck from on-prem servers and streaming via CloudXR, surgeons around and off campus can collaboratively advance surgical planning virtually.

UKB conducted a survey among 100 students enrolled in Thoracic surgery lectures and nearly 100 percent responded that they not only benefited from the technology but also had fun with the experience. Dr. Arensmeyer said, “Students are more likely to show higher retention rates and it encourages young students who are interested in the surgical roles to explore the field.”