Interactive Cardiovascular Surgical Planning via Augmented Reality

ABSTRACT The current practice for planning complex cardiovascular surgeries includes printing and cutting physical heart models. Unfortunately, such cuts are permanent, thus it is not possible to interactively experiment with different cuts, slowing the planning process. In collaboration with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Heart Center (CHOA), we are exploring new ways to improve cardiovascular, or heart, surgical planning through augmented reality (AR). We are developing CardiacAR , an iOS AR application that enables interactive surgical planning on mobile devices. CardiacAR offers powerful and flexible tools critical for surgical planning, such as omni-directional slicing of patients’ 3D heart models and virtual annotation to assist planning. We believe the ubiquity of iOS devices will help broaden access to the CardiacAR technology and streamline its deployment.