Cutting Edge: 3-D Tech Boosts Surgical Precision

“3-D glasses aid doctors carry through invasive surgery when their hands are hidden from view.”

Now 3D glasses are not for moviegoers alone doctors could make some assistance from it as well.  This is suggested by new studies. Doctors preferred to rely on their own experiences having doubts and being skeptic about using the 3D technology but this was all in the past.  This may now change; it is all because of the new and improved 3D glasses and even glasses-free systems.  The study of 50 surgeons using the new technology showed improvements in surgical precision and speed—funded by industry sponsors. “While the technology still requires some fine-tuning, technology without the need to wear special glasses will increase the popularity of 3D systems in operating rooms,” study leader Ulrich Leiner of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin said in a statement.

Upgrading screens are lashing advancements in 3D technology and now high-definition screens are already available.  According to study co-author Michael Witte of HHI, the next step is ultra-high definition, with a sixteenfold improvement in resolution. To test it and evaluate the new 3D technology, researchers invited surgeons from the Klinikum rechts der Isar’s surgical hospital, they will determine if the technology is ready for hospital applications.  A leading endoscope manufacturer and an international display company financed the study. The surgeons tried-and-true four different systems: 2D, 3D with glasses, 3D without glasses and a mirror-based 3D system.  The glasses-free model relied on an eye-tracking camera system that delivered separate images to each eye, creating a 3D effect in the brain.

The technology works like this, the images came from endoscopic cameras used in surgery. The doctors practiced a replicated, routine surgical procedure in which they sewed up a wound in a model patient’s stomach using a needle and thread.  Just as in a minimally invasive surgery, their hands were covered from view and to see what they were doing they depend on the screen. “The results were astonishing,” Hubertus Feußner, of the Klinikum rechts der Isar university hospital in Munich, said in a statement. The winning surgeon performed the procedure in 15 percent less time and with considerably increased precision, Feußner said. According to the researchers, the most surprising thing was that not only young surgeons benefited, but experienced surgeons also.  The doctor that had won and performed best has worked at the hospital for more than 30 years and has conducted thousands of operations.

The surgeons who participated in the study rated the 3D glasses system the highest while the glasses-free system as comparable to the 2D one. Once the technology is widely available, will doctors begin using it? “There’s no doubt that 3D will be a commodity in the future,” Witte said. The study’s results will be forwarded and presented at a congress of the Association of German Surgeons in Berlin in April of this year.  However, the findings have not been published in a scientific peer-reviewed journal.