Holograms - A Game-Changer For Heart Surgery
NUHCS successfully conducted Singapore’s first holography-guided heart surgery
PULSE Issue 39 | June 2022
The Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery (CTVS),
National University Heart Centre,
Singapore (NUHCS) has successfully conducted Singapore’s first
holography-guided heart surgery
using Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 – a
pair of mixed reality smart glasses
through which surgeons can view
a projected three-dimensional (3D)
hologram of the patient’s heart
derived from the patient’s Computerised Tomography (CT) scans.
Holographic devices give doctors a
different perspective of the patient’s
anatomy with views from different angles. In cases where patients
possess a unique anatomy, holograms can empower and
enhance the surgeon’s experience by providing better and
clearer visualisation of the
body before the complex
surgery.
The device further allows
the surgeon to manipulate
images via hand gestures to
move, resize and rotate the visual
or even to superimpose the hologram onto the patient’s chest during
surgery, allowing for better understanding of the challenges before
proceeding with the operation.
Doctors could also potentially use the
device to educate and better describe
medical conditions to their patients,
by giving them a visual of their anatomy and walking them through the
recommended procedure.
A/Prof Theodoros Kofidis, Head
and Senior Consultant, Department
of CTVS, NUHCS, Mr Ng Kian Wei,
Data Scientist, National University
Health System (NUHS), Dr Illas Skaltsiotis, Clinical Fellow, NUHCS,
Dr Chang Guohao, Consultant, Department of CTVS, NUHCS and Dr Gao
Yujia, Associate Consultant, National
University Hospital (NUH) formed
the team that conducted the first
holography-guided heart surgery,
which was also the world’s first
holography-guided minimally
invasive adult heart operation, in
Oct 2021.
The first patient was a 75-year-old
man diagnosed with advanced aortic valve leakage, a condition where
the heart’s aortic valve does not close
tightly, resulting in a backflow of
blood. With the patient’s heart failing quickly due to dilation, an immediate valve replacement
was crucial. Using HoloLens 2, A/Prof Kofidis
was able to project a hologram of
the patient’s heart onto his chest
during the surgery. This assisted
A/Prof Kofidis in placing the incisions
exactly in the right areas through
the space between the ribs, and
also enabled him to accurately evaluate how deep the cuts
needed to be. Since then, the team has conducted
numerous other successful operations which have been described and
published in peer-reviewed journals,
and also recently presented at the
International Society for Minimally
Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery conference in Jun 2022.
