A Wearable Augmented Reality Platform for Telemedicine
This paper describes the development of the prototype of an Augmented Reality based tele-consultation platform settled with a wearable video see through Head Mounted Display (HMD) with the aim to provide specialist consult to low specialist remote area wi
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Department of Translational Research and New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, EndoCAS Center, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy [email protected] 2 Department of Information Engineer, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Abstract. This paper describes the development of the prototype of an Augmented Reality based tele-consultation platform settled with a wearable video see through Head Mounted Display (HMD) with the aim to provide specialist consult to low specialist remote area without the need to move the patient. The platform prototype has the donning advantage that gives the user an immersive experience, moreover the video see through HMD allows for intrinsic coherence of the scenes shared between the users (the mentor and the proctored clinician). The platform has been preliminarily evaluated from a technical point of view and two different scenarios were identified for future clinical testing: ambulatorial (gynecologic) and surgical (orthopaedic). Keywords: E-health
Telemedicine Information systems, collaboration
1 Introduction The terms tele-presence and tele-assistance have been evolving rapidly in the last decades thanks to technology evolution. “Telepresence” used to refers to audio and, occasionally, video interaction between a remote expert supervising a local technician in doing a specific task, while today the concept evolved implying the concept of immersive tele-presence thanks to the Augmented Reality (AR) systems. AR tele-presence (or tele-consultation/tele-mentoring) platforms are widely and commercially diffuse in industry for maintenance purposes [1, 2], indeed AR has the capacity to deliver hands-on training where users receive visual instructions in the context of the real-world objects [3]. In the context of healthcare, from the concept of tele-consultation towards tele-mentoring and tele-surgery, AR based systems are starting to spread in literature even if commercial applications are sparse [4, 5]. Rizou et al. [6] defines a general telemedicine system as “Telemedicine is the use of electronic information and communication technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants (physicians, providers, specialists and patients)”. In such a definition AR based systems seems to be the best way to provide the needed information in a telemedicine context. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 L.T. De Paolis and A. Mongelli (Eds.): AVR 2016, Part II, LNCS 9769, pp. 92–100, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-40651-0_8
A Wearable Augmented Reality Platform for Telemedicine
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A lot of existing tele-consultation platforms rely on systems that allow the mentor to overlay with AR technique graphic or textual annotations onto imagery of the environment where the proctored clinician is. These images are displayed to the trainee typically on a nearby computer monitor. It is an important issue to enhance the ability of the mentor to demonstrate proper actions of the trainee in a manageable way. Vera et al. [7] implemented and validated an augmented
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