Virtual imaging technology: "Digital New Medicine" helps precision medicine
Recently, Xiong Yan, deputy director of the Orthopedics Department of the Army Specialized Medical Center (Daping Hospital) of the Army Military Medical University, led a medical team to independently develop MR (mixed reality) + DAA (minimal invasive direct anterior approach) hip replacement technology, which is a multiple cases of hip joints. Patients with inflammation and femoral head necrosis successfully performed the operation.
Recently, virtual imaging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) have received more and more attention.
In the medical field, virtual imaging technology has also been widely used, and it has shown its skills in assisting precision medicine.
Virtual imaging technology will become a good helper for doctors
Virtual imaging technology represented by VR/AR/MR breaks the boundary between the digital virtual world and the physical real world, and will become a good help for doctors.
Xiong Yan said: "The use of MR technology during surgery can fuse and superimpose virtual images with real anatomical structures, which is equivalent to installing a'perspective eye' for the doctor, so as to perform more precise surgical treatment for the patient."
The operation performed by Xiong Yan's team was to remove the damaged part of the patient with hip joint femoral head necrosis and replace it with an artificial joint prosthesis.
Under MR holographic projection, the virtual image coincides with the patient's body parts and surgical markings. The doctor can quickly see the internal structure of the patient's surgical site, the position of the pelvis and acetabulum, and the position of the standard angle during the operation. No additional incisions and nails are required. With the aid of the rod, the acetabulum can be accurately polished and the acetabular prosthesis can be accurately placed.
The operation only took about 1 hour. The whole process was precise, minimally invasive, and non-invasive. After the postoperative anesthesia, the patient can get out of bed and walk.
"Virtual imaging technology can help doctors perform operations more accurately. It can be said that with the assistance of these technologies, doctors' operations can become more three-dimensional and more intuitive." Xiong Yan said that the industry has already noticed that virtual imaging technology is used in surgery. Many hospitals at home and abroad have carried out related explorations on the role of surgery.
As early as April 2019, the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, joined hands with the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Central South University to assist with MR technology and completed a total laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy for an abdominal tumor patient. According to sources, this is the first operation in my country that uses MR technology to assist in endoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy.
On March 15 this year, the Department of Throat, Head and Neck Surgery and Orthopedics of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University performed the country’s first MR operation of esophageal cervical spondylosis combined with piriform fossa cyst. Departments of orthopedics, tumor surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and other departments also applied it Into the preoperative simulation of part of the operation.
In recent years, in addition to surgical operations, medical imaging, telemedicine, and medical/health education are all hotspots in the application of virtual imaging technology.
In the field of medical imaging, the well-known ultrasound examination introduces virtual imaging technology.
The AR-based ultrasound scanning guidance platform can provide real-world AR scanning guidelines that can be run on handheld devices for positioning and image acquisition problems in ultrasound scanning, so as to realize timely and standardized ultrasound image acquisition and screening.
In terms of telemedicine, with the blessing of 5G network, virtual imaging technology increases visibility, reduces the risk of delay, and greatly improves the accuracy of remote diagnosis.
In the field of medical health education, with the help of MR/VR's ability to "turn a plane into a three-dimensional", the teaching and learning efficiency of anatomy, surgery and other courses will be improved.
The "real" patient holographic images generated by MR that can show various symptoms and signs are expected to replace bulky human simulators and be used for clinical scenario simulation.
In doctor-patient communication, doctors can display the patient's lesions, tissues and organs to patients and their families through virtual imaging technology, so that they can better understand the surgical process.
In addition, virtual imaging technology has also begun to be applied in the treatment of mental illness.
In foreign countries, virtual imaging technology has been used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of veterans, phantom limb pain of the disabled, childhood ADHD, autism, cognitive dysfunction, etc.
Combine with other technologies or usher in a larger market
"However, the current virtual imaging technology is still in the stage of research and development in actual clinical applications." Xiong Yan said, "MR + medicine" has a bright future, but MR technology requires multidisciplinary cooperation such as medicine, imaging, image processing engineers, and software engineers. Joint research and development will further increase the degree of individualized accuracy and automatic matching, and provide technical support for precise and individualized surgeries in the future.
Xiong Yan introduced that from the surgeon's point of view, virtual imaging technology can accurately navigate different operations, but the accuracy of the current operation is not up to millimeter-level matching, and the autonomous navigation function also needs to be adjusted by the doctor during the operation.
"Science and technology empowering precision medicine is both a demand and a trend." Zhang Jiyang, director of the Big Data Artificial Intelligence Center Office of Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, said that although the application of virtual imaging technology in the medical field has just started, it is expected to be in the near future. The field of medical services has brought disruptive changes.
However, Zhang Jiyang also pointed out that the high technical barriers to innovation in the medical field, high research and development costs, and the long-standing medical habits and concepts that take time to change, have caused some solutions to remain in the clinical trial stage or the initial stage of commercialization.
At the same time, issues such as the potential uncertainties brought by the market, the unreasonable positioning of new medical technologies by all parties, and the safety of patients' personal information may also become obstacles to the implementation of innovation.
He believes that by obtaining user feedback in a timely manner in the integration of application scenarios, connecting virtual reality technology with medical cloud, big data, clinical decision support systems, medical robots, etc., may be able to open a unique door to the medical industry. A huge market.