Surgeons tend to be suboptimal when analyzing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of breast cancer patients, largely due to their lack of radiology training.But new virtual reality tools have improved that ability, researchers report JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics.
Dr. Mohamed El Beheiry of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and colleagues conducted a survey of 18 breast surgeons. The surgeon analyzed his MRI scans of 25 patients using standard slice-based visualization tools and a tool called a 3D virtual reality tool. Divanatively generated 3D patient reconstructions instantaneously from original MRI scans. DICOM file format.
Surgeons analyzed scans significantly faster and more accurately using DIVA. The median time to identify the number of lesions and their locations was 145 seconds for slice-based visualization and 37 seconds for DIVA, almost four times faster (P.<0.001). Improvements were also seen in determining which breast and which quadrant contained lesions.
“DIVA demonstrates a method that may significantly improve a surgeon’s ability to read MRI examinations without the need for extensive retraining,” write El Beheiry and colleagues. “The reported efficiency gains in medical image reading have the potential to improve surgical planning and significantly improve communication between surgeons and radiologists.”
In the following interview, engineer and physicist El Beheiry elaborated on the technology and its potential benefits.
Can you describe the 3D virtual environment created by DIVA? What can doctors see and how can they respond?
El Beheiry: Physicians using DIVA are presented with an immersive 3D representation of a patient’s MRI in virtual reality that can be viewed as the patient’s ‘avatar’. Avatars are represented on an accurate physical scale and can be fully explored using handheld virtual reality controllers. For example, a doctor can virtually “cut into” an avatar to better visualize internal organs and take accurate 3D measurements.
What special equipment do you need?
El Beheiry: DIVA requires a computer running Windows with a VR compatible graphics card (NVIDIA 10 series or better) and a commercial PC VR headset (HTC VIVE recommended).
One of the most notable findings of your study is the significant improvement in the speed at which surgeons analyze breast MRI scans using DIVA. Please tell me more about this.
El Beheiry: This finding was notable, but not necessarily surprising. The immersive nature of patient reconstructions produced by DIVA provides a certain level of abstraction with respect to medical images. The surgeon does not see grayscale radiological slices. They see a realistic virtual representation of the patient. Interacting with these representations is designed to be simple, fast, and highly intuitive.
The impact is potentially very significant. In a large cancer center like the Curie Institute, which performs over 3,000 breast surgeries per year, the time savings per surgeon are substantial (several man-hours per year). More notably, these time savings also improve the accuracy of image analysis.
You mentioned additional medical benefits from using DIVA. what are these?
El Beheiry: Curie Institute services with DIVA reportedly improved the understanding and culture of medical imaging broadly. In some ways, DIVA is a shortcut to understanding medical imaging for non-radiologists. Other medical benefits include:
- We demonstrate the general proficiency that surgeons have in reading MRI sequences
- Our results demonstrate a significant reduction in MRI analysis time per patient using DIVA. This is the time available for doctor-patient interaction.
- DIVA opens the possibility for patients to easily share and understand medical imaging information and be more involved in treatment decisions
What are the future technological developments that will further improve DIVA?
El Beheiry: DIVA technology is currently being commercialized by AVATAR MEDICAL SAS, a start-up company founded in 2020. Perhaps ironically, the latest iteration of this technology includes: JCOThe idea here is to bring the surgeon into the culture of medical imaging. The wealth of clinical information contained in these data should be accessible to all clinicians, and future development will be driven in this spirit.
read the study Here.
This work was supported by the Pasteur Institute, Gilead Sciences, and the Lacherche National Laboratory.
El Beheiry is an employee of Avatar Medical. Institut Pasteur and Avatar Medical have an R&D agreement for the development of some components of software programs based on DIVA technology.
