Augmented Reality technology allows the real-time fusion of computer-generated digital content with the real world and displays information that the user cannot directly detect with the own senses. Augmented Reality enhances the users’ perception and improves their interaction with the real world.
The goal of this research activity is to use virtual and augmented reality technologies together with image-based techniques to support surgeons in the diagnosis, planning and operating phase of a surgical procedure. Image processing techniques make it possible to reconstruct 3D models of the organs of a patient from the CT/MRI scans of his body. These models together with the use of visualization and interaction modalities which try to enfatize the details of interest and to improve simplicity and usability can give the surgeons information on a pathological condition which is difficult to detect on pure CT slices.
Augmented Reality technology can guide the surgeon in the operating phase through the overlay of these 3D models and other medical data onto the real patient, allowing to have a sort of ”X-Ray” vision of the body and providing a view of the patient’s anatomy.
