Gizmos & Gadgets: RealView Imaging Delivers High-End Holographic Medical Imaging

July 18, 2018 – An augmented reality startup based in Israel, RealView Imaging, has developed hyper-realistic visualization of three-dimensional medical images. The product, called the Holoscope (TM), delivers full-colour, high-resolution, interactive images that physicians can touch and manipulate.

Where is the Holoscope being used? In radiology, cardiology, operating theatres or in almost any diagnostic clinical setting you can think of. A physician can visualize a heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and see an accurate 3D image that literally floats in front of them. They can interact with the image to help in planning and proceeding with an intervention.

At the touch of a hand, a physician or clinician can rotate the holographic image a full 360 degrees. He or she can slice it open virtually and view its internal structure, mark an area of clinical significance, or mark two points to accurately measure anatomical structures.

3D imaging is not something new to interventional radiology and cardiology. Clinical diagnostic tools from x-ray to ultrasound to cardiac catheterization imaging laboratories render 3D images which today give you depth, shading, and illumination but only on a flat screen two-dimensional display.

The Holoscope is entirely different as you can see in the image below. With it, a physician is seeing an accurate representation of the organ rendered as a free-floating image which can be manipulated in real-time during an investigation or operation.

As I read about the Holoscope I kept thinking back to my daughter’s many heart procedures and the diagnostic and imaging technologies that have been employed to help overcome her complex heart disease. From her first open-heart surgery in 1988 where planning was done with 2D cardiac catheterizations, ultrasounds and x-ray images of her chest cavity, to the most recent intervention, the insertion of a pulmonary valve done by catheterization back in 2009, we have witnessed a number of technological imaging advances. And as good as these technologies have been to help guide the doctors and surgeons in doing the planning for and execution of complex repairs, the promise and capability of the Holoscope make these older imaging tools pale in comparison.

In its current iteration, the Holoscope is already a medical imaging breakthrough. But RealView is working on a next-generation holographic enhancement that will allow doctors to visually see through the patient to look at an organ in situ. For interventional cardiology and radiology, this Holoscope-x which is the current name of the technology, a surgeon, radiologist or cardiologist will visually see, understand and measure the complex anatomy and physiology of the patient with unparalleled accuracy, reducing procedure time, and benefiting patients by eliminating the use of older visualization technologies that expose them to radiation from x-rays.