Vikram Narayan, MD, on the use of augmented reality to assist in resident training

In this video, Vikram M. Narayan, MD, discusses an ongoing study to evaluate the use of augmented reality to simulate surgical procedures for resident training. Narayan is an assistant professor of urology at Emory University and the director of urological oncology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Video Transcript:

One of the roles that I have here at Emory is to help train the next generation of surgeons. I think the importance is how best to get those surgeons ready for their own independent practice. Historically, in surgical education, simulation has been a big area of interest and focus. I don't think we, to date, have a surgical simulator that matches the fidelity or realism of being at a patient's bedside.

One of the things that we are exploring here at Emory is the use of augmented and mixed reality and potentially virtual reality to try and help educate some of our resident surgeons. We have a recently approved, IRB approved study that I'm doing together with my colleague in the department of radiology, Dr. Elias Kikano, to use Apple Vision Pro to essentially do 3D simulation with imaging as well as review of surgical videos in an immersive space so as to try and improve the pre-operative and post-operative experience that a resident has, essentially trying to think through the best way to help augment their education. Put another way, with Apple Vision Pro, what we're hoping to do is have our residents be able to put on a headset and walk through a case before they actually walk into an operating room.

This is very important because right now, the way we do that is through didactic teachings. We'll have videos that are on a 2-dimensional screen, that don't necessarily capture the depth of being at a patient's bedside. We're hoping that with these sorts of tools, we'll be able to improve the comfort and readiness that a resident has by the time they show up in the operating room to assist in a case. It's very early days, but some of the things that we're doing are, with our residents, sitting them down, having them be in headset, in a vision Pro headset—which is a very new technology; it was only released earlier this year in February. So, we're very excited to have this IRB approved study to look at ways in which an attending physician can walk a resident through a case in headset and then figure out the next steps in terms of performance evaluation, that sort of thing.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.

Pictured in the video: Vikram M. Narayan, MD, Assistant Professor of Urology, and Donald Fedrigon, MD, PGY-5, reviewing 3D robotic surgery footage in Apple Vision Pro as part of a pre-procedure planning and didactics. October 29, 2024.