VR beyond video games: Using virtual reality as a tool in planning cardiac surgery – Dailyuw

With the rising prevalence of products like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, most of us associate virtual reality (VR) with a new age of interactive video games. But for Dr. Zachary Steinberg, a cardiologist at the Heart Institute at UW Medical Center, this use of virtual reality isnt very relevant.

I'm a Gen Xer, not a millennial, so video games with VR came after my time," Steinberg said.

Despite this disconnect, Steinberg recently used virtual reality in an innovative way: to assist in cardiac surgery.

Steinberg specializes in congenital heart defects structural abnormalities that develop in the heart before birth. This field of practice comes with particular challenges.

People have real unique anatomy, Steinberg said. You can't necessarily take lessons learned from one patient and apply it to another."

So when Brevin Cronk, a 21-year-old born with complex congenital heart disease, was brought in to the UW Medical Center in December with a partial heart blockage, Steinberg knew his case could benefit from an extra perspective.

Brevin had multiple reconstructions, and that always makes things even more challenging, Steinberg said. Because you're not just trying to understand what the original anatomy looked like but the reconstructions and how each one changed the position of structures in his heart."

Steinberg decided to call in Dmitry Levin, lead research scientist and associate director for the Center for Cardiovascular Innovation. Working with Steinberg, Levin took the information from Cronks CT scan to construct a VR version of Cronks heart.

"We take the medical datasets whether it's CT, MRI, or ultrasound, Levin said. As long as there's a three-dimensional dataset attached to it, we can reconstruct it in a virtual environment."

Using the created VR environment, Steinberg better understood the various reconstructions Cronks heart underwent. With this information in mind, the surgery team anticipated what issues needed to be addressed and approached the surgery with the specific dimensions of the plug needed to patch the heart.

It's not unlike playing a video game where you have a controller that you're not staring at but you're looking at a screen, Steinberg said. Someone's programming that figure to act in a different way depending on how you push [the joystick].

While this intervention sounds futuristic and fun, Steinberg cautioned that VR is still not the cure-all that it sounds like, and is mostly reserved for extremely special cases where an extra perspective is needed.

Like any technology, there's a curve to it, and right now we're certainly on the front of that curve, Levin said. You're putting it in the hands of practitioners who now not only have to understand the medical side but suddenly are introduced to the [audio-visual] side."

One of the main barriers to implementing this tool in all procedures is its high cost. That being said, Levin notes that technological advancement continues to break down this financial barrier.

Something might have been $1000 yesterday, and today it's $500 and tomorrow it will be $100, Levin said. All of those are not just cheaper, they're also better even though the cost is coming down."

Additionally, Levin believes that the real goal for the medical field should be AR, or augmented reality.

The challenge with AR right now is the processing power that's involved with the headsets themselves is just not there, Levin said. Eventually it's going to be much more AR-based for clinical applications within the actual surgical suites and VR more on the pre-procedural aspect of things prior to going into the room."

With these caveats in mind, Levin and Steinberg remain optimistic about the potential for VR to aid clinicians in their practice.

As entertainment moves toward virtual reality, so does the world of medicine for similar reasons, Steinberg said. You're being immersed in it and it really feels like you're living in the world so you can give full attention."

Reach contributing writer Griffin Dugan at science@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @G_Dawg3

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VR beyond video games: Using virtual reality as a tool in planning cardiac surgery - Dailyuw