Some usability issues of augmented and mixed reality for e-Health applications in the medical domain

Augmented and Mixed Reality technology provides to the medical field the possibility for seamless visualization of text-based physiological data and various graphical 3D data onto the patient's body. This allows improvements in diagnosis and treatment of patients. For the patient, this technology offers benefits and further potential in therapy, rehabilitation and diagnosis, and explanation. Applications across the whole range of functions that affect the health sector from the physician, the medical student, to the patients are possible. However, the quality of the work of medical professionals is considerably influenced by both usefulness and usability of technology. Consequently, key issues in developing such applications are the tracking methodology, the display technology and most of all ensuring good usability. There have been several research groups who extended the state of the art in employing these technologies in the medical domain. However, only a few are addressing issues of Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, and Usability Engineering. This paper provides a brief overview over the history and the most recent developments in this domain with a special focus on issues of user-centered development.