The practice of evaluating a patient’s state while they are simultaneously undergoing brain surgery is known as an awake craniotomy. For over 50 years this has been done by holding up pictures, drawings, or words in the patients field of view, and asking them to read or identify what they see. This takes up valuable space in the operating room and often has been done with printed material on paper. By moving this experience into a VR headset, the VR Neuromonitoring project will allow the surgeon to control the patients prompts from where they are operating with foot switches, so that they do not have to stop what they are doing with their hands, and they will be able to see what the patient is seeing on another monitor. This makes the process more efficient, as well as preserving space in the operating room. This also allows for more flexible testing, since some of the content could be generated in real-time to match the needs of the situation instead of having to print material ahead of time, and keep it available and organized in a crowded and busy operating environment.
As stated above, the amount of space within the operating room is limited so it is crucial to be efficient with the management of open space. In the past, awake craniotomies required more personnel, objects, and planning in order to provide a successful monitoring environment. Our project’s goal was to efficiently solve this issue. The use of virtual reality allows a surgical team to immerse a patient into a calmer, more quiet environment that still provides all the capabilities to test a patient’s visual, motor, and speech skills. By reducing the distractions from the patients field of view, we are ensuring that the patient experiences a more efficient testing environment. Our VR application allows any patient to only see testing prompts at the press of a foot switch from a surgical team member. This is quite important as surgeries can become an overwhelming environment for both patient and surgeon. Another important aspect to our project is being able to use patient result data to compare trends with their brain functions. This part of the project will provide a member of the surgical team evidence of whether or not there has been deteriorating cognitive function in real time, as these trends would be displayed on an operating room monitor.
The VR Neuromonitoring project is demonstrating the potential for VR technology in other fields outside the gaming and entertainment industry. Our project showcases the effectiveness VR headsets can have for gathering spatial data through its hand tracking and spatial awareness. In our situation, this data is being used to evaluate the patients motor skills while undergoing surgery and to monitor the before and after results. Although this is only one example, there are many more applications and outcomes that could result from the usage of this technology. One possible use for the headset would be to enable remote control of a machine from a distance. After tracking the movements in space, the headset will send the data to a machine for emulation. There are intentions to use the eye tracking data in the future in addition to the technology that is now being used. Any other data that the headset can produce or any data that the headset can interact with, can be used in other fields. This just shows how this project is contributing to the VR space and its potential for productivity.