title: An effective visualization technique for depth perception in augmented reality-based surgical navigation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Depth perception is a major issue in augmented reality (AR)-based surgical navigation. We propose an AR and virtual reality (VR) switchable visualization system with distance information, and evaluate its performance in a surgical navigation set-up.
  
  
  METHODS
  To improve depth perception, seamless switching from AR to VR was implemented. In addition, the minimum distance between the tip of the surgical tool and the nearest organ was provided in real time. To evaluate the proposed techniques, five physicians and 20 non-medical volunteers participated in experiments.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Targeting error, time taken, and numbers of collisions were measured in simulation experiments. There was a statistically significant difference between a simple AR technique and the proposed technique.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We confirmed that depth perception in AR could be improved by the proposed seamless switching between AR and VR, and providing an indication of the minimum distance also facilitated the surgical tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyunseok
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: Department of Advanced medical Initiatives, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
authors.forename: Byunghyun
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Masamune
authors.affiliation: Department of Advanced medical Initiatives, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hashizume
authors.affiliation: Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jaesung
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hong
mesh_terms: D003867:Depth Perception; D006801:Humans; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: augmented reality; depth perception; surgical navigation; virtual reality