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Virtual Reality Application For Cardiovascular Immersive Operating Room Education Experiences
Austin R. Shelton, Anna C. Moise, Alan B. Lumsden, Stuart J. Corr.
Houston Methdodist, Houston, TX, USA.
Introduction: Innovative education and training approaches are needed to better understand the cardiovascular operating room (OR) environment in ways that are both immersive and easily accessible. Traditional methods, such as limited in-person observation or standard 2D videos, fall short in providing the depth and scalability needed for modern surgical education. Novel, virtual reality (VR) based solutions have the potential to shorten the learning curve for key aspects of surgical training—including procedure setup, intraoperative workflow, and overall OR dynamics—while offering flexible platforms for broad educational use.
Objectives: The goal of this study is to create and test a virtual reality (VR) app, accessed through a Meta Quest headset, that allows users to move between multiple 360° views of the OR. The app also supports playback of 2D videos (Figure 1). By enabling users to seamlessly switch between multiple camera perspectives, the system provides an immersive means of virtually traversing the OR. This work focuses on ensuring accurate video synchronization to provide a smooth and user-friendly learning experience.
Methods: A VR application was developed in Unity to enable synchronous playback of 360° and 2D videos (n=3 and n=2, respectively). Synchronization performance was evaluated over a 5-minute interval with the viewing perspective switched every minute to replicate user navigation. Timestamps synchronization across videos were compared to a target threshold of 160 ms.
Results: We collected 300 samples from each video. The 360° videos stayed perfectly in sync, and comparisons with 2D videos showed only a small offset of about 20 ms in Unity, with no differences on the VR headset. Overall, the app kept all videos synchronized well within the 160 ms limit, ensuring smooth and consistent playback.
Conclusion: This study shows that our VR app can reliably synchronize and replay multiple 360° and 2D videos from a cardiovascular OR. The platform enables seamless perspective switching, offering an immersive and scalable tool for surgical training and education. Ongoing studies are aimed at assessing its impact on medical student and surgical OR team training.
FIGURE 1: (A) OR Camera locations. (B - D) Footage from different viewpoints. (E) 2D video played within 360° environment.
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