Wow, this is terrific. Great to see this technology being put to such fantastic use.
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Surgeons at UCSD Find Apple Vision Pro Promising for Minimally Invasive Surgery
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They could also use an external PD battery pack attached to the main battery. The VP only has a 36 watt hour battery, an external 100 watt hour battery that weighs barely more than a pound could extend its runtime to around 5-6 hours, and if necessary, is hot swappable. Having spent most of my career as an engineer on medical devices they're most certainly looking for a non-disruptive solution first.
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Surgeons at the University of California, San Diego have been testing the Apple Vision Pro for surgeries, and have performed more than 20 minimally invasive operations while wearing the headsets. Surgeon and director of the Center for Future Surgery at UCSD, Santiago Horgan, recently spoke with Time to provide some commentary on the Vision Pro's performance.
According to Horgan, the Vision Pro could be "more transformative" than robotic devices that are used to assist in surgeries. While the Vision Pro is expensive for consumers, it is affordable for hospitals compared to most medical equipment, and it is widely available technology that many hospitals around the country will be able to take advantage of.
During laparoscopic surgeries, doctors send a camera through a small incision, and the camera's view is shown on a nearby screen. Doctors have to watch the screen while also operating on the patient, a process that the Vision Pro streamlines. Horgan says that surgeons need to look over at CT scans, monitor vitals, and more while doing these surgeries, and all of that information can be viewed through the Vision Pro instead.
This prevents surgeons from having to contort their bodies in odd positions, cutting down on discomfort while performing surgeries.
While Horgan has tried other headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft's HoloLens, the displays were not good enough. But the Vision Pro has high-resolution OLED displays, and the result has turned out to be "better than [UCSD surgeons] even expected."
In surgeries that involve the Vision Pro, doctors, assistants, and nurses all wear the headsets instead of looking at screens, and no patients have opted out of the Vision Pro surgeries.
UCSD is also testing the Vision Pro's ability to create 3D radiology imaging, and the team may also test it in other medical applications. More on how the Vision Pro and other similar devices are being tested for medical use is outlined in the full Time article.
Article Link: Surgeons at UCSD Find Apple Vision Pro Promising for Minimally Invasive Surgery
If your surgery lasts more than two hours then it hardly qualifies as "minimally invasive".
Sure
CT Segmentation and viewers in my field include AVIZO, Dragonfly CT, Mimics. Avizo, heralded as the gold standard, used to be cross platform but they ended support for macOS before Apple Silicon was released, which is a shame. I have an older version that still works on macOS really well.
Medical professionals also use Avizo and OSIRIX which is apparently very popular and runs only on macOS.
I use a bunch of other apps for specific research work, but also use JigSpace (which is the one that lets you take models apart, this works on macOS and iPad too but it’s not the same as viewing in a 3D environment), Sketchfab, etc.
Uh, yeah, this will be great when the bandwidth or latency goes down or the connection breaks up.
I can tell you from personal experience that “minimally invasive” operations can nevertheless be a very delicate affair and still carry considerable risks.
That’s not accurate. “Minimally invasive” is about how much has to be cut open, they can still last many hours. “Minimally invasive” means that the surgeon only sees what they’re doing through an endoscope, which is the reason why a 3D imaging system might be useful.
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I had my appendix removed in 1977 and couldn’t walk for a week. I had a hernia removed through a small hole in my abdomen using a robotic surgical device last year and I walked out of the hospital the next morning. If I need a heart valve in 15 years, I hope the surgeon is leveraging every piece of technology available to minimize the effects of the procedure.
This is a brilliant use for the Vision Pro.
This is a brilliant use for the Vision Pro.
I feel like some posters want their surgery done with late 19th century tech "since it's tried and tested" after reading these comments. If I'm getting cut open the guy/gal doing it better have all manner of sci-fi gear.
What's kind of amusing and cracks me up is many here are not aware that AR devices have been used for years in various complex surgical procedures.
And not knowing the above, when a hospital decides to use Apple's AVP in a surgery, it's like planet Earth just tilted an extra 20 degrees with tsunamis on the way.
In 2022 I had spinal surgery through three incisions, each a half inch long in my lower back. I went to the hospital in a wheelchair, into surgery at 10:30am and walked out of the hospital at 5pm. The next day my back was a little sore from the incisions, but fully mobile.
For all the people freaking out about surgeons using AR with the AVP, they're not using the AVP for AR, they're simply using it as video monitor, so they can see multiple screens all at once in their field of view -
Surgeons at the University of California, San Diego have been testing the Apple Vision Pro for surgeries, and have performed more than 20 minimally invasive operations while wearing the headsets. Surgeon and director of the Center for Future Surgery at UCSD, Santiago Horgan, recently spoke with Time to provide some commentary on the Vision Pro's performance.
According to Horgan, the Vision Pro could be "more transformative" than robotic devices that are used to assist in surgeries. While the Vision Pro is expensive for consumers, it is affordable for hospitals compared to most medical equipment, and it is widely available technology that many hospitals around the country will be able to take advantage of.
During laparoscopic surgeries, doctors send a camera through a small incision, and the camera's view is shown on a nearby screen. Doctors have to watch the screen while also operating on the patient, a process that the Vision Pro streamlines. Horgan says that surgeons need to look over at CT scans, monitor vitals, and more while doing these surgeries, and all of that information can be viewed through the Vision Pro instead.
This prevents surgeons from having to contort their bodies in odd positions, cutting down on discomfort while performing surgeries.
While Horgan has tried other headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft's HoloLens, the displays were not good enough. But the Vision Pro has high-resolution OLED displays, and the result has turned out to be "better than [UCSD surgeons] even expected."
In surgeries that involve the Vision Pro, doctors, assistants, and nurses all wear the headsets instead of looking at screens, and no patients have opted out of the Vision Pro surgeries.
UCSD is also testing the Vision Pro's ability to create 3D radiology imaging, and the team may also test it in other medical applications. More on how the Vision Pro and other similar devices are being tested for medical use is outlined in the full Time article.
Article Link: Surgeons at UCSD Find Apple Vision Pro Promising for Minimally Invasive Surgery
"In surgeries that involve the Vision Pro, doctors, assistants, and nurses all wear the headsets instead of looking at screens..."
Not that one day that may happen, but that's not the case here.
Did you not read enough of the article to see that the surgeons said “and the result has turned out to be "better than [UCSD surgeons] even expected”?
And then the surgery is halted temporarily because the backup one needs to be made sterile. So they can't just do it in one go, like they do now. Yeah, great choice!
Or, you know, just plug it in.
The haters that keep bringing up battery life always ignore that the AVP can simply plug into a wall outlet. Just like most medical equipment. And if there is a general power outage…it has a two hour battery backup.
So many here simply straining to maintain their hate. For no reason. Not for you? Fine. Move on. But you embarrass yourself bending over backwards to invent reasons to hate it even in this example.
Or, you simply have multiple light seals that pop off and back on in a matter of seconds.
This is entirely a non-issue. But keep reaching.
That was my concern. The passthrough is fuzzy. The UI elements are crystal clear.
As someone who sells and trains docs on OR equipment I can tell you for a fact that Vision Pro would not takeoff. And good luck getting Olympus Pentax intuitive etc letting Apple play with their devices.