The role of extended reality for planning coronary artery bypass graft surgery

Prerecorded Talk

The live footage of the talk, including the Q&A, can be viewed on the session page, Personal Visualization, Theory, Evaluation, and eXtended Reality.

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Keywords

extended reality, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, anatomic complexity, treatment planning, stereoscopic and monoscopic displays

Abstract

Immersive visual displays are becoming more common in the diagnostic imaging and pre-procedural planning of complex cardiology revascularization surgeries. One such procedure is coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, which is a gold standard treatment for patients with advanced coronary heart disease. Treatment planning of the CABG surgery can be aided by extended reality (XR) displays as they are known for offering advantageous visualization of spatially heterogeneous and complex tasks. Despite the benefits of XR, it remains unknown whether clinicians will benefit from higher visual immersion offered by XR. In order to assess the impact of increased immersion as well as the latent factor of geometrical complexity, a quantitative user evaluation (n=14) was performed with clinicians of advanced cardiology training simulating CABG placement on sixteen 3D arterial tree models derived from 6 patients two levels of anatomic complexity. These arterial models were rendered on 3D/XR and 2D display modes with the same tactile interaction input device. The findings of this study reveal that compared to a monoscopic 2D display, the greater visual immersion of 3D/XR does not significantly alter clinician accuracy in the task of bypass graft placement. Latent factors such as arterial complexity and clinical experience both influence the accuracy of graft placement. In addition, an anatomically less complex model and greater clinical experience improve accuracy on both 3D/XR and 2D display modes. The findings of this study can help inform design guidelines of efficient and robust XR tools for pre-procedural planning of complex coronary revascularization surgeries such as CABG.