Immersive 3D virtual reality imaging in planning minimally invasive and complex adult cardiac surgery.

Over the past decades, surgery on the heart and vessels is becoming more and more complex, necessitating more precise and accurate preoperative planning. Nowadays, operative planning is feasible on flat, two-dimensional computer screens, however, requiring a lot of spatial and three-dimensional (3D) thinking of the surgeon. Since immersive 3D virtual reality (VR) is an upcoming imaging technique with promising results in other fields of surgery, we aimed in this study to explore the additional value of this technique in heart surgery. Our surgeons planned six different heart operations by visualizing computed tomography scans with a dedicated VR headset, enabling them to visualize the patient's anatomy in an immersive and 3D environment. The outcomes of this preliminary study are positive, with a much more reality-like simulation for the surgeon. In such, VR could potentially be beneficial as a preoperative planning tool for complex heart surgery.