Psychomotor Surgical Training in Virtual Reality

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a novel s/w system aiming to disrupt the healthcare training industry with the first psychomotor virtual reality (VR) surgical training solution. We provide the means for performing surgical operations in VR, thereby facilitating training in a fail-safe environment that very accurately simulates reality and significantly reduces training costs, offering surgeons and the healthcare ecosystem a way to improve operation outcomes drastically.

With the presented system, we focus on a completed total knee arthroplasty (TKA) virtual reality operating module, opening the way for making available a full suite of virtual reality operations. Our methodology transforms medical training to a cost-effective and easily and broadly accessible process. The latter is accomplished by employing the latest VR, gamification and tracking technologies for virtual character-based, interactive 3D medical simulation training. It requires standard h/w (PCs, laptops) irrelevant of the operating system. For optimal user experience, a commodity VR head-mounted display (HMD) should be employed along with motion or other hand-controller sensors. The open ovidVR architecture supports all current and forthcoming VR HMDs and standard 3D content generation. Our novel technologies facilitate Presence that is the feeling of ‘being there’ and ‘acting there’ in the virtual world, thereby offering the means for unprecedented training.