Assisting Vascular Surgery with Smartphone Augmented Reality

Background Augmented reality is a technology that expands on image-guided surgery to allow intraoperative guidance and navigation. Augmented reality-assisted surgery (ARAS) has not been implemented in the vascular field yet. The wealth of sensors found on modern smartphones make them a promising platform for implementing vascular ARAS. However, current smartphone augmented reality platforms suffer from tracking instability, making them unsuitable for precise surgery. Novel algorithms need to be developed to tackle the stability and performance limitations of mobile phone augmented reality. Aim The primary aim was to develop an ARAS system utilizing low-cost smartphone hardware for vascular surgery. The second aim was to assess its performance by evaluating the stability of its tracking algorithms. Methods We designed an ARAS system utilizing standard optical tracking (SOT) and developed a novel tracking algorithm: hybrid gyroscopic and optical tracking (HGOT) for improved tracking stability. We evaluated the stability of both tracking algorithms using a phantom model and calculated tracking errors using root mean square error (RMSE). Results The novel augmented reality system displayed a three-dimensional (3D) guidance model fused with the patient’s anatomy on a smartphone in real-time. The rotational tracking RMSE was 3.12 degrees for SOT and 0.091 degrees for HGOT. Positional tracking RMSE was 3.3 mm for SOT compared to 0.03 mm for HGOT. Comparing the stability of both tracking techniques showed HGOT to be significantly superior to SOT (p = 0.004). Conclusion We have developed a novel augmented reality system for vascular procedures. The development of HGOT has significantly increased the stability of a low-cost handheld augmented reality solution.