Eye surgery simulation being explored in VR
Electric Puppets is helping to facilitate simulating eye surgery using VR tools
Halifax— January 2nd, 2020 — Eye surgery requires tremendous depth perception, as one might imagine, but Dr. Robert Laroche, head of the IWK Childrens Hospital Eye Clinic, believes depth perception can be learned, and improved with practice. Up to now, practicing of various highly precise depth perception exercises has been limited to extremely expensive virtual microscopes that have their own limitations.
In collaboration with kinetic expert David Westwood, undergrad Ashley Whelan, and Dr Laroche, Electric Puppets is providing VR technology to potentially assist surgeons in practicing by interacting with targets less than 1mm in size in a “virtual eye surgery bay”. The technology runs on relatively inexpensive consumer electronics, but has shown potential to be precise enough to provide lots of practice time for surgeons in training at their convenience. “We’ve even simulated the loops that magnify the scene and are positioned just like how the surgeons wear them on their glasses while doing surgery. Establishing that rotational movement was precise enough to detect sub millimeter positioning of a very small surgical suture was critical and I believe we’re there. We are now awaiting institutional ethics board approval to commence our formal study and we’re excitedly anticipating results that could help the safety of training qualified eye surgeons by giving them critical practice time in a virtual environment tailored to their needs and prepare them well for the real operating room environment."
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For more information, press only:
Ryan Cameron
CEO, Electric Puppets
(902) 221-8924
Jonathan Gallant
President, Electric Puppets
(902) 476-5929
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