Real-Time Augmented Reality for Robotic-Assisted Surgery

Training in robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery is crucial, but the training with actual surgery robots is relatively expensive. Therefore, improving the efficiency of this training is of great interest in robotic surgical education. One of the current limitations of this training is the limited visual communication between the instructor and the trainee. As the trainee's view is limited to that of the surgery robot's camera, even a simple task such as pointing is difficult. We present a compact system to overlay the video streams of the da Vinci surgery systems with interactive three-dimensional computer graphics in real time. Our system makes it possible to easily deploy new user interfaces for robotic-assisted surgery training. The system has been positively evaluated by two experienced instructors in robot-assisted surgery.