Interactive Navigation System in Mixed-Reality for Neurosurgery

In many bedside procedures, surgeons must rely on their spatiotemporal reasoning to estimate the position of an internal target by manually measuring external anatomical landmarks. One example of such a procedure is ventriculostomy, where the surgeon inserts the catheter in the patient's skull to divert the cerebrospinal fluid and alleviate the intracranial pressure. However, one-quarter to one-third of the insertions miss the target which can ultimately lead to undesirable surgical outcomes. We have developed an interactive navigation system using mixed reality on a head-mounted display that overlays the target directly on the patient's anatomy and provides visual guidance for the surgeon to insert the catheter on the correct path to the target.