Application and exploration of virtual reality technology in surgical practice and medical education / 中华消化外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that interacts computer-generated three-dimensional scenes with the user′s senses and has been gradually applied in the real medical field. Since the first time of successful attempt in 3D laparoscopic gastrointestinal surgery VR living video broadcast in 2016, the authors have experienced the exploration of the application of this technology (2016-2017) as well as the in-depth research phase (2018-2019). Nowadays, the VR application in our center has entered into the application practice phase (2020 to present). With the technology iteration and more and more application experience acquisition, our current VR application mainly focuses on two practice settings, including the clinical teaching scenarios for early exposure to acute appendicitis for medical undergraduate students and the preoperative communication to give pati-ents an early sense of the process in the operating theatre, and has achieved good application results. With continuous breakthroughs and innovations in software and hardware, we believe that more clinical VR scenarios and the course audience will be expanded to a wider group. The integration of some new hotspots such as Meta-Universe and ChatGPT will make up for the shortcomings in VR content scenarios and interactivity, and its application prospects are infinite.