Teaching aneurysm access on a medical digital twin in virtual reality.
Download Free Trial
Multidimensional Medical Imaging in Virtual Reality
Patient data from CT, MRI, echocardiography and ultrasound form the basis for digital teaching in VR. The complete patient record is imported into Medicalholodeck and visualized in a fully immersive virtual space. In addition to image data, laboratory results and other information can also be displayed.
Visualizing the complete patient data in digital space creates an immersive patient model - a medical digital twin. In Münster, teaching with such a medical digital twin enables neurosurgical training at a very high didactic level.
Importing medical patient data to VR opens new possibilities for education and medical professionals.
Neurosurgical Teaching in VR at Münster University Hospital
Neurosurgical teaching in Virtual Reality at UKM is the initiative of Markus Holling, MD (read the interview here). The deputy director of the Department of Neurosurgery is responsible for student teaching and has developed and continuously expanded the project since 2019.
Medicalholodeck supports his teaching with a wide range of importable data formats, digital tools for segmentation and masking, and easy-to-use team functionality. In addition, Medicalholodeck can access the rich online library with wireless Oculus Quest 2 hardware without the need for locally installed computers.
Residents are studying neurosurgery in virtual reality, using multidimensional patient data.
The students' acceptance of virtual reality is also of great importance to the project. Teaching in VR was appreciated from the beginning: VR allows students to quickly and easily access the precise three-dimensional anatomy of real neurosurgical cases. The possibility of interaction with the medical digital twins is found to be extremely valuable and time-saving.
Medical Digital Twins for Surgical Training
Using medical digital Twins in medical teaching and surgical training opens up new and diverse possibilities. Thanks to virtual reality's digital representation of multidimensional patient data (4D, 3D, and 2D data, plus additional information), surgical teaching can be taught and trained specifically on suitable real cases. The representation of all patient data in an immersive digital space allows exceptionally detailed insight into the patient's characteristics and the precise operation simulation.
Creating medical digital twins in Medicalholodeck is simple. 4D and 3D data from CT, MRI, CBCT, PET, SPECT, Echocardiography, and Ultrasound can be imported. Additionally, 3D data formats (Obj, STL), images, movies, texts, and even PDFs, can be imported and displayed. Patient data is imported in no time and displayed in the fully digital immersive VR space.
Markus Holling, MD
Markus Holling is a board-certified neurosurgeon, deputy chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and head of the vascular section, University Hospital Münster, Germany.
Besides his work at the department of neurosurgery, he is a board-certified Emergency Physician and has a passion for teaching, being several times awarded as teacher of the year. Dr. Markus Holling is married and father of two sons.
To the interview
Universitätsklinikum Münster
Münster University Hospital (UKM)
is a German maximum-care hospital in Münster. It has 1,513 beds in which a total of 55,582 inpatients and 499,113 outpatients were treated in 2020. It consists of over 40 individual clinics and polyclinics that work closely with the Medical Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster.
Since the winter semester of 2021, Dr. Holling has taught neurosurgical procedures in VR twice a week. In addition to the usual anatomical aspects, the focus is set on depicting actual pathologies (e.g., aneurysms) and the therapeutic approach. Dr. Holling demonstrates the correct incision and removal of bone and points out brain sections and alternative access routes. It is important to him that all participants can actively participate in the demonstrations.
Learning Success With Medical Virtual Reality
The residents appreciate the immersive teaching with Medicalholodeck. Their feedback is very positive: the winter semester of 2021/2022 showed that the neurosurgery course was evaluated well above the faculty average and as the best practical course of the semester.
Medicalholodeck is easy to use and offers tools in virtual reality for educators and professionals.
The residents are impressed with the visual quality, ease of use of the software, and most importantly, the steeper learning curve and resulting time savings. Inexperienced residents using Medicalholodeck for the first time understand the handling of the software in less than 5 minutes.
Working on precise medical digital twins allows training on real patient cases in a team, independent practice, and self-study. Dr. Holling is convinced that medical virtual reality in combination with medical digital twins will play a significant role in the field of surgical training in the future.
Medical Education With Cloud Rendering, On-Premise Hosting, and PC VR
Medicalholodeck works with VR glasses from all manufacturers and can be used with PC VR tethered to a computer and Meta's Air Link, wireless use via wifi.
In addition, Medicalholodeck offers cloud rendering.
Cloud rendering enables location-independent VR streaming via the internet. Virtual Reality can be used in the highest resolution and performance, which is of great importance for medical imaging. In addition, Medicalholodeck offers cloud rendering. Cloud rendering enables location-independent VR streaming via the internet.
Cloud Rendering with NVIDIA’s CloudXR
CloudXR breaks the confines of traditional VR and AR, delivering streaming of XR content to untethered devices with a level of fidelity that’s indistinguishable from native tethered configurations.
CloudXR lets you leverage NVIDIA RTX-powered servers with GPU virtualization software to stream Medicalholodeck. This means medical professionals can run Medicalholodeck across 5G and Wi-Fi networks to any device while embracing the freedom to move, without wires, and with no limits.
More about NVIDIA’s CloudXR
