Candidate: George Poothicottu Jacob
Title: A HoloLens Framework for Augmented Reality Applications in Breast Cancer Surgery
Date: January 16, 2018
Time: 2:00pm
Place: E5-5047
Supervisor(s): Michailovich, Oleg - Bishop, William D.
Abstract:
The project aims to support oncologic breast-conserving surgery by creating a platform for better surgical planning by modelling a framework that is capable of displaying a virtual model of the tumor(s) in need of surgery, on the patient breast.
Breast-conserving surgery is the first clear option when it comes to tackling cases of breast cancer, but the surgery comes with risks. The surgeon wants to maintain clean margins while performing the procedure such that the disease does not resurface. This calls for the importance of surgical planning where the surgeon consults with radiologists and pre-surgical imaging such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The MRI prior to the surgical procedure, however, is taken with the patient in the prone position (face-down) but the surgery happens in a supine position (face-up). Thus, mapping the location of the tumor(s) to the corresponding anatomical position from the MRI is a tedious task which requires a large amount of expertise and time given that the organ is soft and flexible.
For the intents of our project, we need to visualize the tumor(s) in the corresponding anatomical position to assist in surgical planning. Augmented Reality is the best option for this problem and this, in turn, led us into our investigation of the application capability of the Microsoft HoloLens to solve the above mentioned. Given its multitude of sensors and resolution of display the device is a fine candidate for this process, however, the HoloLens is still under development with a large number of limitations in its name. Our work tries to compensate for these limitations using the existing hardware and software in the device's arsenal.
Through this thesis, the principal questions that we answer are related to the acquiring of data from breast mimicking objects in acceptable resolutions, discriminating between the information based on photometry, offloading the data to a computer for post-processing in creating a correspondence between the MRI data and acquired data, and finally retrieving the processed information such that the MRI information can be used for visualizing the tumor in the anatomically precise position.
Unfortunately, the time limitations for this project has led to an incomplete system which is not completely synchronized, however, our work has solidified the grounds for the software aspects toward the final goals we set out such that extensive exploration need only be done in the imaging side of this problem.