Application of Virtual Reality Systems in Bone Trauma Procedures

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Bone fractures contribute significantly to the global disease and disability burden and are associated with a high and escalating incidence and tremendous economic consequences. The increasingly challenging climate of orthopaedic training and practice re-echoes the established potential of leveraging computer-based reality technologies to support patient-specific simulations for procedural teaching and surgical precision. Unfortunately, despite the recognised potential of virtual reality technologies in orthopaedic surgery, its adoption and integration, particularly in fracture procedures, have lagged behind other surgical specialities. We aimed to review the available virtual reality systems adapted for orthopaedic trauma procedures. Materials and Methods: We performed an extensive literature search in Medline (PubMed), Science Direct, SpringerLink, and Google Scholar and presented a narrative synthesis of the state of the art on virtual reality systems for bone trauma procedures. Results: We categorised existing simulation modalities into those for fracture fixation techniques, drilling procedures, and prosthetic design and implantation and described the important technical features, as well as their clinical validity and applications. Conclusions: Over the past decade, an increasing number of high- and low-fidelity virtual reality systems for bone trauma procedures have been introduced, demonstrating important benefits with regard to improving procedural teaching and learning, preoperative planning and rehearsal, intraoperative precision and efficiency, and postoperative outcomes. However, further technical developments in line with industry benchmarks and metrics are needed in addition to more standardised and rigorous clinical validation.

Microsurgery Robots: Applications, Design, and Development

“…To achieve a high-quality immersive experience in the XR environment, it is crucial to ensure that users have precise, natural, and intuitive control over virtual objects, and that virtual objects realistically reflect the physical world [195][196][197]. There are three key challenges, namely high-fidelity feedback, real-time processing, and multimodal registration [198,199], that need to be addressed to minimize interaction errors and ensure that users can accurately manipulate virtual objects in a manner that mirrors the real world. This section will describe the 3D reconstruction techniques that provide high-fidelity surgical information for the XR environment, and present the current state of research on the XR environment for preoperative training and intraoperative guidance.…”