At the moment AR solutions (not to be misunderstood with VR solutions) are used in a very wide variety of industries, such as the gaming, real estate, construction and educational industries. But did you know that AR is becoming more well known in the health care industry as well?
In recent years more life science companies are developing AR solutions to provide consumers with new therapies by combining the virtual and physical world. At the moment AR solutions are used in a very wide variety of cases, for patient and doctor education, disease simulation and surgical visualization. These types of solutions assist healthcare professionals and general practitioners make better decisions. An example of such an AR solution is an application that draws and maps a patient’s body and shows the locations of where the veins are located. This can assist nurses and doctors when it is the first time when drawing blood or starting an IV procedure prior to surgery. In addition, augmented reality is valuable for preparation for actual surgeries as it provides useful predictions of the outcome, which minimizes the risk of failure.
Augmented reality can also be used for tracking purposes by using applications. A distinction should be made between marker-less and marker-based tracking. Marker-less tracking entails that patients are being tracked by a stereo camera setup and 3D matching algorithms are used to follow them. Marker-based tracking means that patients are tracked by either fiducial markers or spherical markers. The spherical markers reflect incident IR (infrared) light which in turn are being recorded by a camera. Fiducial markers can be printed and sticked on a patients body, however this is less accurate than spherical markers. This is not only beneficial for doctors to better assess where the issue is located but also for patients. AR can assist healthcare professionals to better explain the symptoms that a patient might have by providing AR images that can precisely show what the issue is.
