Information Technology in La Jolla, Calif., an academic research insti-
tution where he serves as founding director.
Dr. Ramamoorthy could hardly believe her eyes when she entered
the darkened room. Projected onto a black wall was a 6-foot high 3D
image of Dr. Smarr's intestine. She'd never been able to visualize an
internal organ as a 3D reconstruction. Doing so changed how she
thought about how she'd perform the sigmoid colon resection surgery.
Before the first incision, she saw precisely where to resect and she
saw the small kink that would add a degree of complexity to the pro-
cedure. For a surgeon used to operating based on a 2D image of a
patient's MRI or CT scan, Dr. Ramamoorthy saw the future of surgery,
one in which surgeons could look up at a virtual reality model on a
monitor and down at the flesh-and-blood organ on the table.
"It was unbelievable to see the shape of the organ and how it was
oriented in his body," says Dr. Ramamoorthy, chief of the division of
colon and rectal surgery at University of California, San Diego Health.
"Visualizing it from various angles gave me the information I needed
to start thinking about ways to approach the challenging case long
before I entered the OR."
Pre-planning surgery with virtual reality models isn't the only imag-
ing upgrade that promises to improve how your surgeons view sur-
gery.
• Higher resolution. ORs are adding ultra high-definition 4K video
just as Japanese researchers are developing an 8K laparoscope, which
provides 16 times the resolution of standard HD. 8K will provide
images of anatomy that are sharper, clearer and life-like in color.
Surgeons working with 8K scopes will also be able to zoom way in on
structures and tissue without losing an ounce of clarity.
"Improved resolution enhances surgeons' views and lets them see
important structures with deeper clarity," says Dr. Ramamoorthy. "In
1 0 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
