Mixed Reality Communication for Medical Procedures: Teaching the
  Placement of a Central Venous Catheter
Manuel Rebol Krzysztof Pietroszek Claudia Ranniger Colton Hood Adam Rutenberg Neal Sikka David Li Christian Gütl
Medical procedures are an essential part of healthcare delivery, and the
acquisition of procedural skills is a critical component of medical education.
Unfortunately, procedural skill is not evenly distributed among medical
providers. Skills may vary within departments or institutions, and across
geographic regions, depending on the provider's training and ongoing
experience. We present a mixed reality real-time communication system to
increase access to procedural skill training and to improve remote emergency
assistance. Our system allows a remote expert to guide a local operator through
a medical procedure. RGBD cameras capture a volumetric view of the local scene
including the patient, the operator, and the medical equipment. The volumetric
capture is augmented onto the remote expert's view to allow the expert to
spatially guide the local operator using visual and verbal instructions. We
evaluated our mixed reality communication system in a study in which experts
teach the ultrasound-guided placement of a central venous catheter (CVC) to
students in a simulation setting. The study compares state-of-the-art video
communication against our system. The results indicate that our system enhances
and offers new possibilities for visual communication compared to video
teleconference-based training.