The research team at John Hopkins University had developed a virtual reality simulator to train surgeons to operate on a skull without harming the brain.
Patients with severe head injury mainly suffer from the risk of skull and brain damage via complications in surgery. Sometimes the condition of the damaged skull was too complicated to operate on it. In such conditions, the patient has a maximum risk of skull base injury. To minimize this risk factor for head injuries, the research team at John Hopkins University had developed a virtual reality system to detect and observe the skull injury and help to solve it. This technique is present in a paper published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization has been established on a virtual reality platform.
A Member of the development team at John Hopkins University, Adnan Munawar, stated that the drilling method needs surgeons to eliminate the tiniest bone fragments from the skull around the damaged area without hurting the brain. Along with that, sometimes the nerves are also in the affected region, it will get affected by this too. To prevent these problems from happening, this system offers the option to perform the surgery with minimum damage.
This system mainly consists of three external devices, a VR headset, a scanning device, and a computer. For the implementation of this system, the operator has to scan the head by using a portable scanning device. The scanner will provide a 3D print to the computer. After gathering the whole image, the surgeon has to use a VR headset to observe the diorama of the skull in an enlarged platform. In this way, a surgeon can detect any abnormality in the head. After detecting the issue, the surgeon can simulate the surgery on the computer screen. The computer provides the animated output of drilling, cutting, and patching the skull. The system shows the output of the surgery in 3D imaging as well as in thermal imaging also. The system will also help in the surgery of other complicated body parts.