Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Dec;26(1):1996923.
doi: 10.1080/10872981.2021.1996923.

Remote mentoring in laparotomic and laparoscopic cancer surgery during Covid-19 pandemic: an experimental setup based on mixed reality

Michele Simone  1 , Rocco Galati  1 , Graziana Barile  1 , Emanuele Grasso  1 , Raffaele De Luca  1 , Carmine Cartanese  1 , Rocco Lomonaco  1 , Eustachio Ruggieri  1 , Anna Albano  1 , Antonello Rucci  1 , Giuseppe Grassi  2
Affiliations

Remote mentoring in laparotomic and laparoscopic cancer surgery during Covid-19 pandemic: an experimental setup based on mixed reality

Michele Simone et al. Med Educ Online. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

In this paper, Mixed Reality (MR) has been exploited in the operating rooms to perform laparoscopic and open surgery with the aim of providing remote mentoring to the medical doctors under training during the Covid-19 pandemic. The employed architecture, which has put together MR smartglasses, a Digital Imaging Player, and a Mixed Reality Toolkit, has been used for cancer surgery at the IRCCS Hospital 'Giovanni Paolo II' in southern Italy. The feasibility of using the conceived platform for real-time remote mentoring has been assessed on the basis of surveys distributed to the trainees after each surgery.

Keywords: Virtual reality; laparoscopic surgery; laparotomic surgery; mixed reality; smartglasses.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The adopted architecture for remote mentoring includes MR smartglasses, a digital imaging player, a DICOM database containing the medical images and a mixed reality toolkit
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The surgeon while resizing a virtual image (left); the virtual images placed on the real scene (center); the surgeon while dragging a digital photo (right)
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The surgeon performs a ‘drag and drop’ gesture during a gastrectomy to rotate and scale a virtual image
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Mirco N, Andrea C, and Angelo G, et al. At the epicenter of the covid-19 pandemic and humanitarian crises in Italy: changing perspectives on preparation and mitigation NEJM Catalyst innovations in care delivery . 2020. 1 .
    1. Zertuche J-P, Connors J, Scheinman A, et al. Using virtual reality as a replacement for hospital tours during residency interviews. Med Educ Online. 2020;25:1777066. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Doyle D. Simulation in medical education: focus on anesthesiology and critical care medicine. Med Educ Online. 2002;7:4544. - PubMed
    1. Briganti G, Le Moine O. Artificial intelligence in medicine: today and tomorrow. Front Med (Lausanne). 2020;7:27. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Nair L, Patel A. Mixed reality in plastic surgery: a primer. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2018;142:1. - PubMed