A Low-cost Mobile System with Multi-AR Guidance for Brain Surgery Assistance.

Surgical operation especially brain surgery requires comprehensive understanding on the surrounding area of the surgical path. Augmented Reality (AR) technology provided an effective way to increase the surgeon's perception on the plan. However, current applications were hindered by the expensive hardware and limited guidance information. In this paper, an AR system especially designed for brain surgery was proposed, which featured in low-cost system components and multi-AR guidance. A light-weight AR glasses was utilized together with normal mobile phone to provide mobile AR to the surgeon. A web-based application was implemented for compatibility of various mobile devices. Multi-AR information was designed for surgical guidance, including planned operation path, dangerous areas, and three quantitative guidance metrics. Patient's specific 3D model was reconstructed based on CT images, and the phantom was utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. The experimental results indicated that the assistance of the multi-AR guidance outperformed the results of with no AR guidance at all and with virtual path guidance only. As a result, our system could help the operator to perform the operation tasks easier.Clinical Relevance- This proposed method provided a potential way for brain surgery with multiple AR guidance information with the assistance of a low-cost AR system, which may improve the surgeon's cognition on the surgical site.