UC San Diego

Invasive medical procedures are essential in healthcare, but clinicians can only be effective in performing them when they are able to precisely understand an individual patient's anatomy. While training and multi-year experience form the basis for any medical procedure, individualized medical imaging plays a critical and continuous role across both the educational context and the everyday practice of these procedures. As a result, with the improvement of technology and computer science, advanced visualization of medical imaging has emerged as a vital area of research. More recently, the widespread adoption of affordable XR (eXtended Reality) technology has opened the way to new exciting opportunities that aim to improve clinicians' comprehension of spatial relations among anatomical structures and could revolutionize medical imaging visualization in various educational settings. While XR is promising to take medical imaging visualization to new heights, current XR systems do not cater to the specific requirements of diverse medical procedures, and important research work needs to address how to shape their customization and adaptation in those settings.

This dissertation introduces the design and implementation of systems and techniques that support the planning and treatment using various invasive medical procedures across the XR spectrum. It investigates clinical settings that span from invasive surgical procedures to contemporary acupuncture, derived from a traditional invasive procedure. Both of these clinical practices emphasize accuracy, safety, and evidence-based practice, but present different challenges when integrating technological advancements for enhanced comprehensive anatomy understanding, personal data interpretation, and visual guidance. We first show how to support surgical planning focusing on the utilization of smartphones, head-worn VR headsets, and optical see-through glasses, and then utilize a user-centered design approach to explore the requirements and design considerations for leveraging XR technology to empower training and treatment in acupuncture practice, including exploring how a novel VR acupuncture training system has the potential to be integrated into clinical practice in the near future. This research also sheds light on the potential synergies and relationships between traditional treatment and other minimally invasive procedures.

Overall, this dissertation's research contributes to the design and development of specialized XR systems tailored to the unique needs of different medical treatment scenarios. By extending the horizons of how various types of treatments can benefit from XR, this work broadens the potential applications and advantages of this technology.