Virtual Reality in Healthcare: A Survey

Introduction

It is well known that the use of modern technologies in the medical industry helps to improve the quality of services provided. The cooperation of these two fields is constantly developing, and researchers are looking for more and more advanced solutions to improve the work of medics, but above all to increase the quality of treatment of diseases and disorders. In recent years, virtual reality (VR), by providing an interactive computer-generated environment, has found its way into various medical fields. VR simulates the physical presence of the user in an artificially generated world and allows them to interact with this environment. The use of VR in medicine is an area of great opportunity, as evidenced by clinical studies and experienced physicians (Riva, 2003). For example, VR can serve as a training environment that helps healthcare professionals improve their skills through hands-on learning. The key strength of such solutions is the ability to include even very rare clinical cases in scenarios and the total lack of consequences for wrong decisions and actions undertaken. Although the field is completely new, there are already several such applications that have been shown to have a significant impact on improving both medical education and patient treatment and therapy.

The term virtual reality refers to a computer simulation representing an environment in which one can move and interact with virtual space, events, objects, and people (avatars). The virtual environment is usually three-dimensional and often replicates the real world in terms of appearance and physical phenomena occurring in it. Typically, VR applications can be divided into three groups based on the degree of immersion into applications using: VR displays (e.g., stereoscopic (Alfalah et al., 2018), large-format (Hsieh et al., 2017), virtual caves (Flaconer et al., 2016)), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality helmets.

The first type is a partially or semi-immersive VR environment (Lee et al., 2008). It is usually projected onto a wall or monitor using special goggles used to view 3D objects. Interaction with the virtual world is based on simple input devices such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, or touch screen. Augmented reality is based on combining the real world with the virtual world, thus superimposing 3D graphics in real time, e.g., using translucent glasses. Such applications are very often used in medical imaging - specialists have access to visualization of the structure or function of the patient's internal organs.

Figure 1.

Types of virtual reality used in medical applications.

From left - stereoscopic screen (Alfalah et al., 2018), AR for learning anatomy, VR headset for depression treatment

The creation of the first Oculus Rift prototype (2010) marked the beginning of the strong development of head-mounted display (HMD) virtual reality helmets. At the current level of technology development, most VR applications are based on HMDs, with players such as Sony, HTC, Facebook, and Google competing to produce them. Their main aim is to create cheaper yet more powerful hardware, which is essential for the popularization of VR (Gutierrez et al., 2017). The simplest VR platform has been developed by Google. It includes simple, cheap, foldable cardboard frames in which a smartphone is placed (many popular smart phone models can be used). More complex, and therefore more expensive solutions, such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, require complex hardware infrastructure so they are rather used in laboratories and specially adapted rooms. These types of VR platforms do not require additional hardware for interaction, as they come standard with headsets and controllers with a built-in set of sensors.