End-to-End assessment of AR-assisted neurosurgery systems

Abstract: Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a significant advancement in surgical procedures, offering a solution to the challenges posed by traditional neuronavigation methods. These conventional techniques often necessitate surgeons to split their focus between the surgical site and a separate monitor that displays guiding images. Over the years, many systems have been developed to register and track the hologram at the targeted locations, each employed its own evaluation technique. On the other hand, hologram displacement measurement is not a straightforward task because of various factors such as occlusion, Vengence-Accomodation Conflict, and unstable holograms in space. In this study, we explore and classify different techniques for assessing an AR-assisted neurosurgery system and propose a new technique to systematize the assessment procedure. Moreover, we conduct a deeper investigation to assess surgeon error in the pre- and intra-operative phases of the surgery based on the respective feedback given. We found that although the system can undergo registration and tracking errors, physical feedback can significantly reduce the error caused by hologram displacement. However, the lack of visual feedback on the hologram does not have a significant effect on the user 3D perception.