Purpose The data which is available to surgeons before, during and after surgery is steadily increasing in quantity as well as diversity. When planning a patient’s treatment, this large amount of information can be difficult to interpret. To aid in processing the information, new methods need to be found to present multimodal patient data, ideally combining textual, imagery, temporal and 3D data in a holistic and context-aware system.
In the medical domain, the usage of VR applications has quickly increased in recent years @cite_17 , mainly due to the development of low-cost hardware. Many of these applications are focused on treating patients with traumas @cite_16 @cite_15 @cite_24 or chronic pain @cite_3 . These applications place patients into an immersive virtual scene, often as a form of exposure therapy.
@cite_3 @cite_24 @cite_15 @cite_16 @cite_17
2008656842 2624272460 2604690721 2615219938
Abstract This randomized, controlled, within-subjects (crossover design) study examined the effects of immersive virtual reality as an adjunctive analgesic technique for hospitalized pediatric burn inpatients undergoing painful physical therapy. Fifty-four subjects (6–19 years old) performed range-of-motion exercises under a therapist's direction for 1–5 days. During each session, subjects spent equivalent time in both the virtual reality and the control conditions (treatment order randomized and counterbalanced). Graphic rating scale scores assessing the sensory, affective, and cognitive components of pain were obtained for each treatment condition. Secondary outcomes assessed subjects’ perception of the virtual reality experience and maximum range-of-motion. Results showed that on study day one, subjects reported significant decreases (27–44 ) in pain ratings during virtual reality. They also reported improved affect (“fun”) during virtual reality. The analgesia and affect improvements were maintained with repeated virtual reality use over multiple therapy sessions. Maximum range-of-motion was not different between treatment conditions, but was significantly greater after the second treatment condition (regardless of treatment order). These results suggest that immersive virtual reality is an effective nonpharmacologic, adjunctive pain reduction technique in the pediatric burn population undergoing painful rehabilitation therapy. The magnitude of the analgesic effect is clinically meaningful and is maintained with repeated use. Professionalism and communication skills are important aspects of medical training, and virtual patient applications can offer cost effective, easily accessible platforms for communication practice which complement flexible, student-driven medical school curriculum design. Further, numerous virtual and augmented reality platforms have been introduced recently. This paper explores potential advantages and disadvantages Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR AR) technologies offer to the development of a virtual patient application specifically for communication practice - the Emotive Virtual Patients - with a natural user interface. VR AR technologies may offer highly interactive, immersive virtual patient experiences that tie to our research goals, improve presence and create a more fertile environment to practice empathy, however they may also present platform-specific challenges. A potential virtual patient design framework is discussed, and the unique benefits and limitations of VR AR devices are analyzed. We put our research in the context of other virtual patient research, and hypothesize what benefits in terms of presence and natural user interfaces VR AR may provide. Introduction Virtual reality (VR) and head mount displays (HMDs) have been advanced for multimedia and information technologies but have scarcely been used in surgical training. Motion sickness and individual psychological changes have been associated with VR. The goal was to observe first experiences and performance scores using a new combined highly immersive virtual reality (IVR) laparoscopy setup. Virtual reality (VR) refers to an advanced technological communication interface in which the user is actively participating in a computer-generated 3-dimensional virtual world that includes computer sensory input devices used to simulate real-world interactive experiences. VR has been used within psychiatric treatment for anxiety disorders, particularly specific phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder, given several advantages that VR provides for use within treatment for these disorders. Exposure therapy for anxiety disorder is grounded in fear-conditioning models, in which extinction learning involves the process through which conditioned fear responses decrease or are inhibited. The present review will provide an overview of extinction training and anxiety disorder treatment, advantages for using VR within extinction training, a review of the literature regarding the effectiveness of VR within exposure therapy for specific phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder, and limitations and future directions of the extant empirical literature.