Development of augmented reality technology for surgical resection accuracy via improved visualization

A challenge in arthroscopic hip surgery is visualizing patient anatomy beneath the skin's surface, specifically in femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) surgeries. FAI is characterized by a bony deformity and hip pain that leads to osteoarthritis. Due to both poor visualization and under-resection of the bone deformity in FAI surgeries, patients often undergo revision surgeries and/or ongoing pain. During surgery, the patient's preoperative medical images are displayed on a monitor alongside the arthroscope's view. Rather than the surgeon mentally fusing the medical images of the hip anatomy onto the patient, augmented reality (AR) could integrate surgical visualization through a head-mounted display that overlays the patient's virtual anatomy onto the real world. This work presents the results from a preliminary user study, which assessed the functionality and accuracy of our AR live-resection tracking model via Microsoft Hololens 2 with a motion capture (MoCap) system. Our primary objective was to assess the initial accuracy of our live-resection tracking model in a simplified simulation with a physical object compared to our ability to track the resection in a virtual object. Our secondary objective was to obtain user feedback on the current AR system for resection tracking.