Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 technology is being used to help people analyse a digital replica of what is happening inside their bodies, with the aim of bettering their understanding of their medical condition and potential treatments.
Using tech from Medical iSight to create 3D visualisations of the human body using Holo Lens 2, it allows surgeons to visualise the blood vessels, bones and internal organs inside a patient.
Featured on BBC television show Your Body Uncovered, the technology uses a mixed reality headset and spatial anchors, or ‘landmarks’. The HoloLens devices recognise these landmarks and agree on where they are located, so that when headsets are used together, they all recognise the same digital replica at the same time.
The mixed reality headset allows consultants and patients to view 3D images at the same time, with the consultant able to move and change the digital replicas using simple voice commands or hand gestures.
Dr Philip Pratt, a former Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London and Chief Scientific Officer at Medical iSight, commented: “If someone had an issue with their spine, a consultant would usually show them a generic model of a spine or draw something on a pad of paper. But now they could see their own body in fantastic detail.”
Patrick Furlong, Executive Producer of Your Body Uncovered, said: “At the beginning we looked at virtual reality but that wouldn’t work because it’s hard to translate what people are seeing through the headsets to people watching on TV at home. We wanted to show patients interacting with their body and experiencing it.”
He added: “We couldn’t have made this programme without HoloLens 2. There was no other technology that could have done it. It was such an immersive experience. People were deconstructing their own body and peering inside to see their organs. They were understanding what was happening to them in a way they had never experienced before.”
