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Head-mounted display cataract surgery: a new frontier with eye tracking and foveated rendering technology

Eye volume 38, pages 1022–1023 (2024)Cite this article

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Sorkin et al. reported their preliminary experience of using a three-dimensional head-mounted display (Beyeonics Vision, Israel) in cataract surgery [1]. The authors conducted a well-designed interventional case series on 60 consecutive patients who underwent cataract surgery with the head-mounted display platform in Tel Aviv, Israel and found the system can easily be used in routine cataract surgery, with benefits in image control, picture quality and ergonomics. Improved ergonomics during ophthalmic surgery is essential, as over 50% of ophthalmologists in numerous studies around the world report having neck and back pain [2].

This novel head-mounted display visualization during cataract surgery represents a large potential advancement in ophthalmic technology. Merging this technology for surgery visualization with rapidly emerging techniques in extended reality (XR) may be the next frontier in advancing surgical proficiency with head-mounted visualization. While currently not included, eye tracking technology has been introduced into XR technology and can be integrated into this cataract surgery technology to provide useful metadata for surgeons, as well as be useful for ophthalmic surgical trainees by showing the exact gaze location of the surgeon. Gaze tracking can provide unique insights into the decision-making process of surgeons and may even become a future area of study. Foveated rendering is another emerging XR technology can also be integrated into the head-mounted display framework. This technique allows for concentrated resolution at the fovea to optimize GPU delivery. Utilization of this technique can provide extremely high-resolution images at the location of the surgeon’s gaze while optimizing performance of the hardware during surgery to prevent any small lags, an important consideration in the operating room and performing microsurgeries with millimeter precision.

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References

  1. Sorkin N, Levinger E, Achiron A, Gomel N, Cohen S, Rabina G, et al. Use of a three-dimensional head-mounted digital visualization platform in cataract surgery. Eye. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-023-02427-w.

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Funding

NASA Grant [80NSSC20K183]: a non-intrusive ocular monitoring framework to model ocular structure and functional changes due to long-term spaceflight.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Ethan Waisberg

  2. Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Joshua Ong

  3. Human-Machine Perception Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV, USA

    Nasif Zaman, Sharif Amit Kamran, Prithul Sarker & Alireza Tavakkoli

  4. Center for Space Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  5. Department of Ophthalmology, Blanton Eye Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  6. The Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  7. Department of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  8. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  9. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  10. Texas A&M College of Medicine, Bryan, TX, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  11. Department of Ophthalmology, The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

Authors
  1. Ethan Waisberg
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  2. Joshua Ong
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  3. Nasif Zaman
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  4. Sharif Amit Kamran
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  5. Prithul Sarker
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  6. Alireza Tavakkoli
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  7. Andrew G. Lee
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Contributions

EW – Conceptualization, Writing. JO – Conceptualization, Writing. NZ – Review, Intellectual Support. SK – Review, Intellectual Support. PS – Review, Intellectual Support. AT– Review, Intellectual Support. AGL – Review, Intellectual Support.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew G. Lee.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Waisberg, E., Ong, J., Zaman, N. et al. Head-mounted display cataract surgery: a new frontier with eye tracking and foveated rendering technology. Eye 38, 1022–1023 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-023-02794-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-023-02794-4

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