Augmented Reality in Minimally Invasive Surgery

In the last 15 years Minimally Invasive Surgery, with techniques such as laparoscopy or endoscopy, has become very important and research in this field is increasing since these techniques provide the surgeons with less invasive means of reaching the patient’s internal anatomy and allow for entire procedures to be performed with only minimal trauma to the patient. The advantages of the use of this surgical method are evident for patients because the possible trauma is reduced, postoperative recovery is generally faster and there is less scarring. Despite the improvement in outcomes, indirect access to the operation area causes restricted vision, difficulty in hand-eye coordination, limited mobility handling instruments, two-dimensional imagery with a lack of detailed information and a limited visual field during the whole operation. The use of the emerging Augmented Reality technology shows the way forward by bringing the advantages of direct visualization (which you have in open surgery) back to minimally invasive surgery and increasing the physician's view of his surroundings with information gathered from patient medical images. Augmented Reality can avoid some drawbacks of Minimally Invasive Surgery and can provide opportunities for new medical treatments. After two decades of research into medical Augmented Reality, this technology is now advanced enough to meet the basic requirements for a large number of medical applications and it is feasible that medical AR applications will be accepted by physicians in order to evaluate their use and integration into the clinical workflow. Before seeing the systematic use of these technologies as support for minimally invasive surgery some improvements are still necessary in order to fully satisfy the requirements of operating physicians