Seeing is believing: increasing intraoperative awareness to scattered radiation in interventional procedures by combining augmented reality, Monte Carlo simulations and wireless dosimeters.

PURPOSE: Surgical staff performing image-guided minimally invasive surgical procedures are chronically exposed to harmful ionizing radiation. Currently, no means exist to intraoperatively depict the 3D shape and intensity of scattered radiation fields or to assess the body-part exposure of clinicians. We propose a system for simulating and visualizing intraoperative scattered radiation using augmented reality.

METHODS: We use a multi-camera RGBD system to obtain a 3D point cloud reconstruction of the current room layout. The positions of the clinicians, patient, table and C-arm are used to build a radiation propagation simulation model and compute the deposited dose distribution in the room. We use wireless dosimeters to calibrate the simulation and to evaluate its accuracy at each time step. The computed 3D risk map is shown in an augmented reality manner by overlaying the simulation results onto the 3D model.

RESULTS: Several 3D visualizations showing scattered radiation propagation, clinicians' body-part exposure and radiation risk maps under different irradiation conditions are proposed. The system is evaluated in an operating room equipped with a robotized X-ray imaging device by comparing the radiation simulation results to experimental measurements under several X-ray acquisition setups and room configurations.

CONCLUSIONS: The proposed system is capable to display intraoperative scattered radiation intuitively in 3D by using augmented reality. This can have a strong impact on improving clinicians' awareness of their exposure to ionizing radiation and on reducing overexposure risks.