Augmented Reality in Breast Surgery Education

Abstract

Introduction: Augmented reality (AR) has demonstrated a potentially wide range of benefits and educational applications in the virtual health ecosystem. The concept of real-time data acquisition, machine learning-aided processing, and visualization is a foreseen ambition to leverage AR applications in the healthcare sector. This breakthrough with immersive technologies like AR, mixed reality, virtual reality, or extended reality will hopefully initiate a new surgical era: that of the use of the so-called surgical metaverse. Methods: This paper focuses on the future use of AR in breast surgery education describing two potential applications (surgical remote telementoring and impalpable breast cancer localization using AR), along with the technical needs to make it possible. Conclusion: Surgical telementoring and impalpable tumors noninvasive localization are two examples that can have success in the future provided the improvements in both data transformation and infrastructures are capable to overcome the current challenges and limitations.