Comparison of optical see-through head-mounted displays for surgical interventions with object-anchored 2D-display.
OBJECTIVE
Optical see-through head-mounted displays (OST-HMD) feature an unhindered and instantaneous view of the surgery site and can enable a mixed reality experience for surgeons during procedures. In this paper, we present a systematic approach to identify the criteria for evaluation of OST-HMD technologies for specific clinical scenarios, which benefit from using an object-anchored 2D-display visualizing medical information.


METHODS
Criteria for evaluating the performance of OST-HMDs for visualization of medical information and its usage are identified and proposed. These include text readability, contrast perception, task load, frame rate, and system lag. We choose to compare three commercially available OST-HMDs, which are representatives of currently available head-mounted display technologies. A multi-user study and an offline experiment are conducted to evaluate their performance.


RESULTS
Statistical analysis demonstrates that Microsoft HoloLens performs best among the three tested OST-HMDs, in terms of contrast perception, task load, and frame rate, while ODG R-7 offers similar text readability. The integration of indoor localization and fiducial tracking on the HoloLens provides significantly less system lag in a relatively motionless scenario.


CONCLUSIONS
With ever more OST-HMDs appearing on the market, the proposed criteria could be used in the evaluation of their suitability for mixed reality surgical intervention. Currently, Microsoft HoloLens may be more suitable than ODG R-7 and Epson Moverio BT-200 for clinical usability in terms of the evaluated criteria. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that presents a methodology and conducts experiments to evaluate and compare OST-HMDs for their use as object-anchored 2D-display during interventions.
Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. camp@jhu.edu.|Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. camp@jhu.edu.
Long
L
Qian
Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.|Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Alexander
A
Barthel
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Alex
A
Johnson
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Greg
G
Osgood
Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Peter
P
Kazanzides
Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.|Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Nassir
N
Navab
Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Bernhard
B
Fuerst
D003196:Computer Graphics; D003626:Data Display; D004867:Equipment Design; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D019637:Orthopedic Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
Intervention; Mixed reality; Optical see-through head-mounted display; User study