Craig Russell Craig Russell

Mixed Reality For Spinal Surgery

One of the more exciting projects that I’ve had the opportunity to work on is leveraging the Microsoft HoloLens 2 for both patient education and as an assistive tool for spinal surgery.

The patient education component is comparatively straightforward and is intended to help doctors communicate with their patients with 3D models and animations. It serves as a powerful tool to explain the complexities of different spinal pathologies as well as illustrating corrective surgical animations.

The surgical component is really quite interesting in that it allows the surgeon to visualize the surgical plan on the patient in 3D space. Tools, and the patient are tracked in real-time and provide an “x-ray vision” view to the surgeon and the other surgical crew.

It’s really exciting stuff!

If you want to learn more you can see some pictures and video of the product here:

https://degenmedical.com/product/degen-medical-xr/

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Craig Russell Craig Russell

HoloLens 2 Face Shield

Ah, so here is a something I had almost forgotten about.

Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic we were exploring ways to make the HoloLens 2 usable for doctors or even personnel having to work within close proximity to one another.

So a coworker and I set off on creating a face shield that could be attached to the front visor of the headset. The challenge was that we didn’t have a 3D model of the HoloLens and I was the only one with the HoloLens at a time when we were both working remotely.

In the end, we used photogrammetry to construct a 3D model of the HoloLens from which to design the shield. Through the magic of my camera and a not at all janky banana holder + painter’s tape and 3D printing we were able to iterate quite quickly on the design and get something functional. Quite an interesting experience which I would love to elaborate upon at some point.

There were definitely some issues with it and areas in which it could have been improved (the transparency covering the camera and sensors could cause tracking problems) but not bad considering the constraints we were operating under.


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Craig Russell Craig Russell

Hello World.

My first post! So I plan to occasionally post about whatever things I happen to be working on, some news that I find interesting, and personal projects that may or may not be technical in nature.

Hopefully, that means I’ll be posting about Mixed Reality (Augmented and Virtual Reality), 3D printing, car stuff, and photography, and whatever else might catch my interest.

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