Augmented Reality in Minimally Invasive Surgery

The advantages of the Minimally Invasive Surgery are evident for the patients, but these techniques have some limitations for the surgeons. In medicine, the Augmented Reality (AR) technology allows surgeons to have a sort of “Xray” vision of the patient’s body and can help them during the surgical procedures. In this paper we present two applications of Augmented Reality that could be used as support for a more accurate preoperative surgical planning and also for an imageguided surgery. The first AR application can support the surgeon during the needle insertion for the Radiofrequency Ablation of the liver tumours in order to guide the needle and to have a precise placement of the instrument within the lesion. The augmented visualization can avoid as much as possible to destroy healthy cells of the liver. The second AR application can support the surgeon in the preoperative surgical planning by means of the visualization of the 3D models of the organs built from patient’s medical images and in the choice of the best insertion points of the trocars in the patient’s body.