Virtual Reality for Immersive Education in Orthopedic Surgery Digital Twins

Abstract

Virtual Reality technology, when integrated with Surgical Digital Twins (SDTs), offers significant potential in medical training and surgical planning. We present SurgTwinVR, a VR application that immerses users within an SDT and enables them to navigate a high-fidelity virtual replica of the surgical environment. SurgTwinVR is the first VR application to utilize a dynamic 3D environment that is a clone of a real surgery, encompassing the entire surgical scene, including the surgeon, anatomy, and instruments. Our system utilizes a SDT with important improvements for real-time rendering and features to showcase the potential benefits of such an application in surgical education.