Virtual reality, augmented reality, and ambient reality have various applications in healthcare, including surgical procedures, medical therapy, patient education, medical training, data visualization, skill enhancement, and architectural design. However, many current applications are limited by technological issues such as delays in overlaying real-time images, side effects from prolonged headset use, and limitations of computing power that require tradeoffs between realism and interactivity. Further research is needed to address these problems.

1. Virtual Reality
in
Health Care
Presentation by:
Rabeendra Basnet
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2. Contents
• Introduction:
o Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Ambient Reality
• Applications in Health care:
Surgical procedures
Medical therapy
Preventive medicine and patient education
Medical education and training
Visualization of massive medical databases
Skill enhancement and rehabilitation
Architectural design for health-care facilities
• Discussions:
Problems and Limitations
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3. Virtual Reality (VR)
• The definition of ‘virtual’ is near and reality is
what we experience as human beings.
• Technically, computer generated environment
which can be explored and interacted with by
a person.
• In a part of a virtual world, human are capable
to manipulate objects or perform a series of
actions.
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4. Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality (AR) supplements the real world with virtual objects, such that
virtual objects appear to coexist in the same space as the real world
(Zhou, Duh & Billinghurst, 2008).
Here is a sampling of AR products out there or coming in the near future:
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AccuVein helps providers locate patients'
veins more accurately for injections
VA-ST is helping those
with impaired vision
to see
Surgical Navigation Advanced Platform
(SNAP) lets physicians demonstrate their
plans for a surgery i.e., been cleared by
FDA

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VR Dentist is a dental app that uses virtual
and augmented reality for educational
purposes
Anatomy 4D visualizes detailed bone structures
and organ systems when the device is pointed at
special downloaded templates
smARtsKin (in development)
superimposes relevant patient contours
onto real-time camerage feeds of patients
undergoing radiation therapy
Google Glass, despite being discontinued,
continues to play a vital role in the development
of many of the AR applications in the medical
field

6. Ambient Reality (AmR)
• Ambient describes some pervasive quality of the
surrounding environment, like the ambient
lighting in a theater, or the ambient temperature
of a room (Ubiquitous Computing).
• Ambient Learning is to foresee a process in which
technology and humans cooperatively increase
and adapt their knowledge about one another.
• This process has three technology related facets:
– Technology must learn from—and adapt to—its users.
– Users must learn from—and about—tech-nology.
– Technology must learn from—and adapt to—other
technology.
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7. Applications in Health care:
Surgical procedures (Remote Surgery or Telepresence)
• Telepresence applications link research in robotics
and virtual environments. These systems are to
manipulate equipment at remote sites.
– Cholecystectomies (gall bladder) removal by
Endoscopic surgery, Orthopedics, joint replacement
used locally by robbots,
– Brain surgery: MRI overlaid on a video image of the
patient’s head by Fusing scanned images and real time
video image
– HMD [head-mounted display] for overlaying ultrasound
images on live video or visualization of x-ray images.
– Planning and Simulation of Procedures Before Surgery
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8. Medical therapy
• Psycho-oncological VR Therapy (POVRT)
application
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Technique Examples Who/Where
Controlled virtual
environments
To modify eating disorders Giuseppe Riva, Istituto Auxologico
Italiano,VREPAR Project
To provide interventions for the
rehabilitation of neglect for the
treatment of stroke disorders
John Wann & Simon Rushton,
University of Reading, VREPAR
Project
To treat autistic children to
recognize a common object and
then to find the object in the
environment, walk to it, and stop
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill School of
Medicine
To treat acrophobia Georgia Institute of Technology
VR/3-D eyeglasses and
headphones for movies or
educational programs

9. Preventive medicine and patient education
• VEs could become an important educational tool,
as well as provide edutainment. Eg; Health Hero
Game Series.
• Such realities are expected to enhance people
self esteem; self-efficacy; communication about
health; health knowledge and skills; and
motivation to learn about health, and how these
factors can influence self-care behavior and
health outcomes.
• In other areas of virtual environments, although
to be effective, products must be tailored to the
particular applications and users. 9

10. Medical education and training
• VR allows information visualization through 3-D
visualization or Bird’s Eye View.
• Students can understand important physiological
principles or basic anatomy and the display of
massive volumes of information and databases.
• By adding the fourth dimension of time, Dr.
Helene Hoffman, University of California,
concludes by “Flying into an organ and grabbing
something” e.g. spotted ulcer in stomach and
grabbing a sample for biopsy test.
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11. Medical Education and Training
Technique Examples Who/Where
VR laparoscopic surgery
simulator, consisting of a
torso into which the handles
of laparoscopic instruments
are mounted and providing
force feedback
The virtual abdomen (liver and
gallbladder) are graphically displayed
upon the video monitor, and the
apprentice surgeon practices specific
laparoscopic procedures.
Woods and D. Hon
Heart catheterization
simulation including
feedback
Allows the trainee to guide a balloon
catheter through a hollow guiding
wire to the obstruction, inflate the
balloon to expand the artery, and
restore regular blood flow.
High
Techsplantations
Inc.,
Rockville, MD
Virtual abdomen Created for the immersive,
traditional helmet-mounted display
(HMD) and Dataglove.
Richard M. Satava,
Arlington, VA
Limb trauma simulator Will lead to a virtual reality
environment.
MusculoGraphics,
Inc.,Evanston, IL
Simulating surgery complete
with feedback on the force
being exert
Simulates surgery on the human
Eye.
Georgia Institute
of Technology,
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12. Visualization of massive medical databases
• Virtual reality is a way to visualize, manipulate, and interact
with computers and extremely complex data.
• The image space is a virtual reality data set representing
functional as well as anatomic digital data.
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System Examples Who/Where
Epidural technique
Allowing residents to investigate various
3-D datasets
Ohio State
University
War injury statistics Providing a cyberspace representation of
war injuries from the Viet Nam Database;
allowing complex combinations of war
wounds, organ systems injured, mortality,
etc. to be visualized as clusters of data
points
J. Henderson

13. Skill enhancement and rehabilitation
Applications Examples Who/Where
Training in use
of equipment
Training disabled children to
control motorized wheelchairs
Dean Imman, University of
Oregon
Exploration of
‘physical space’
Providing virtual environments for
exploration in a wheelchair
Greenleaf Medical
Systems,Palo Alto, CA
Empowerment
of the disabled
using an eye
tracker device
Providing a quadriplegic child the
opportunity to develop interactions with
the outside world before her disability
causes her to become too introverted to
communicate
David Warner, Human
Performance Institute of
Loma Linda University
Medical Center,CA
Use of virtual
reality to
enhance vision
of the visually
impaired
- Providing a virtual computer monitor that
moves the users line of sight across an
enlarged virtual monitor
-Providing vision enhancement
-Using glasses that display a television
image to help Parkinson's disease patients
overcome their halting, hesitant gait
University Applied Physics
Laboratory at The John
Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MD
Suzanne Weghorst,
University of Washington
Train to Travel
project
Substituting virtual reality bus rides for the
real thing to train individuals to use the
public transportation system independently
University of Dayton
Research Institute, OH, and
Miami Valley Regional
Transit Authority, FL 13

14. Architectural design for health-care facilities
• Virtual environment testing of architectural designs
for health-care facilities could save both time and
money. However, considerable research on
interaction methods and software system design will
be needed before those savings can be realized.
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Architectural design
testing
Applying virtual reality to
architectural design of the
operating room of the future
-----------------------------------------
Allowing designers to perform
work within a virtual
environment
Dr. Kenneth Kaplan,Harvard
Graduate School of Design
Sale of health-care
products
Presenting interactive layouts
of health-care equipment to
potential clients in real time

15. Problems and Limitations
• Problems that limit their effectiveness due to the state of the
art of the supporting technologies.
• Problem relates to overlaying ultrasound images on live video
that is then viewed in a head-mounted device application is
the alignment of images in real time
• Experiments conducted by the British Defence Research
Agency confirms 89 of 146 healthy adults suffered temporary
nausea, dizziness, or impaired vision after using a [virtual
reality] helmetmounted display (HMD) for just 20 minutes.
• Simulations trade off less realism for more real-time
interactivity because of limited computing power.
• Fujita Research has created a situation in which a construction
robot in America can be controlled from Japan but there is a
delay of a second or more from the time the command is
given.
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16. References
• http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/21783/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-ambient-reality-ubiquitous-
computing-imaginet-internet-services
• https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/informatio
ntechnology/59072
• https://peerj.com/articles/469/
• http://medicalfuturist.com/category/blog/digitalized-
care/augmented-reality/
• https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/what-is-virtual-reality.html
• https://www.esighteyewear.com/
• http://www.accuvein.com/blood-draw/
• http://www.surgicaltheater.net/site/products-services/surgical-
navigation-advanced-platform-snap
• http://www.brandcrowd.com/gallery/brands/thumbs/thumb14846
376293244.jpg
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17. Any Question
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