Virtual reality in interventional radiology

Summary

Applications of virtual reality in Interventional Radiology have largely been directed towards development of simulators for teaching and for training in catheterization procedures or for demonstrating specific interventions such as angioplasty, stent placement or intra-arterial drug infusion therapy. Primary advantages of such systems are that they provide the clinician with an opportunity to practice hand-eye coordinated catheter manipulations that previously could only be achieved during actual patient studies or in the animal laboratory. Difficulties with the systems include problems relating to modeling realistic interactions between the catheter and blood vessels and difficulties in providing the clinician with a library of vascular reconstructions demonstrating pathologies from actual patient databases. Also, because the catheterization procedure is so closely linked with imaging equipment, it is a challenge to reproduce the clinical setting insofar as the clinician feels a part of the laboratory environment. Technological developments in patient image data acquisition, image reconstruction and processing should help solve the problem of creating realistic pathological vascular data sets.

Keywords:

• interventional radiology
• medical simulation
• cardiovascular
• catheterization