Siemens Healthineers is presenting an Apple Vision Pro app that would let surgeons turn real-life imaging scans into interactive holograms, allowing them to view a patient’s anatomy from the comfort of their own living rooms, you know, for fun.
The company also lists potential use cases in communication, medical education and surgical planning for the headset app—for one example, in helping patients to better understand an upcoming procedure.
Dubbed Cinematic Reality, the app is making its debut at the annual HIMSS conference being held next week in Orlando, Florida.
“Cinematic Reality gives people the opportunity to immerse themselves in a world of photorealistic renderings of the human anatomy. Apple Vision Pro perfectly presents that three-dimensional experience, combined with great flexibility and standalone use,” Christian Zapf, Siemens Healthineers’ head of digital and automation, said in a statement. “We see great potential for the technology for clinical as well as educational purposes.”
According to the company, users can zoom into details of clinical images and rotate renderings of the human body, without the need to connect to an additional computer.
The goal is to provide a more realistic way of visualizing organs—and, perhaps in the future, assist surgeons in pre-operative planning or help radiologists explain scan results and referrals to people outside their field.
The app isn’t Siemens Healthineers’ first foray into VR. The company previously worked with developer PrecisionOS to offer virtual training programs on Oculus VR headsets for its imaging machines—including software that lets OR clinicians practice using a mobile C-arm to realistically generate 2D and 3D X-ray images.