i2Health Sant Pau Projects Blog: Bariatric Surgery

Virtual Reality Platform for simulate Bariatric Surgery and predict patient evolution

The Bariatric Surgery Project is a multidisciplinary initiative designed and executed by healthcare professionals (surgeons and radiologist) and e-Health researchers. It aims to develop a Virtual Reality platform to support surgeons in prepare and perform the surgery, as well as, estimate patient’s evolution.

The system will retrieve the patient’s abdominal TACs from the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) available at the hospital. From these TACS the system will generate a real 3D representation of the patient’s stomach. The platform will allow the physicians to interact with the 3D model, zoom it, decompose it and finally plan the real surgery simulating it over the 3D model. Also, the platform will incorporate heuristic models providing a prediction of the patient’s weight loss.

After the Surgery will be possible generate new 3D representation of the patient’s stomach, allowing the physicians study the result of the surgery, and preventing post-surgery complications or not expected outcomes.

The system will be integrated with the Hospital information system, allowing retrieving DICOM TACs, the storage of the 3D patient’s stomach model from the PACS and the sending of the patient’s information into his electronic health record (EHR) using HL7 standards.

In addition, Bariatric Surgery project includes a predictive model, which based on previous data from similar surgeries and combined with data of the patient will be able to estimate the evolution.

Currently we are working on collect patients data from previous bariatric surgery interventions for the study, a first prototype of 3D stomach reconstruction, which has been designed and will be tested by using real TACs, and the development of a especial data base for the project and its integration with the Hospital Information Systems.