gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: In order to alleviate the correct planning of liver resections various liver planning systems have been tried in the past couple of years. Of all established systems the in between correlation of those using 3D and augmented reality with the real surgical situs has been reported to be best. The aim of the presented study was to investigate if surgeons who are provided different surgical planning platforms profit from the virtual planning mode.

Methods: Clinicians (surgeons and radiologists) were provided a 2D and a 3D as well as an virtual reality (VR) liver surgery planning system which consisted of 15 scenes. The included scenes were created in an afferent modus – starting from simple 2D imaging ending up in virtual reality. Several standardized tasks and measurements had to be performed in each scene in a defined time span of 5 minutes each. Every participant was only allowed to do 5 scenes daily. A time span of 1 day was required between a course of 5 scenes and the next 5 scenes. Performance results of surgeons were compared to those of radiologists.

Results: Forty clinicians (20 surgeons (sur), 20 radiologists (rad)) were included into the presented analysis. Overall radiologists needed less time to perform the tasks (mean time all scenes: 3.1 0.5 min vs. 4.4 1.0 min, p=0.003), whereas surgeons needed less time to perform tasks in virtual reality as compared to 2D and 3D imaging (mean time 2D: 1.9 0.4 min (rad) vs. 4.0 0.9 min (surg), p=0.001; mean time 3D: 2.5 1.6 min (rad) vs. 3.2 0.5 min (surg), p=0.05; mean time VR: 4.5 0.9 min (rad) vs. 2.5 1.2 (surg), p=0.001). The time span surg needed to perform the given tasks decreased significantly (p=0.03) throughout the study period and increased for radiologists.

Conclusion: Surgeons seem to profit from virtual reality based planning systems. The decrease in time needed throughout the given tasks resembles a learning effect. However, radiologistis definitely performed better in 2D and 3D.