Benchmarking of a Proposed Augmented-Reality System Architecture

摘要

Advances in augmented-reality (AR) technologies have seen their increased adoption in robotic-assisted procedures in a surgical environment, as they provide both cognitive benefits through improved information management, as well as potential reductions in operating times with the removal of manually operated physical displays. A crucial component of successfully transferring AR-based technologies from a research environment into operating theatres is a robust back-end communication system capable of rapidly communicating information between surgical robots and head-mounted displays. A system capable of carrying out this task was constructed by coding a server program written in C#, which communicated via WiFi with a HoloLens™ (Windows, USA) app coded in C# deployed via Unity (Unity Technologies, USA). The system architecture utilised User-Datagram Protocol to take raw input data, format it into packets, and then wirelessly transmit it to the HoloLens™. The constructed system was tested against a benchmark frequency (>10Hz) to examine its suitability in a real-time application. Data varying in size from from 0.128 KB - 4.69 MB was successfully transmitted above the real-time benchmark, with the lowest recorded frame-rate registering at 14.13Hz, indicating that the system shows promise in transmitting surgical navigation workflow information and coordination-transformation data in a surgical environment. Future work on the system will aim to further streamline the communication architecture in order to smoothly integrate any additional hardware into the communication network whilst maintaining a low communication-latency, with an overarching aim of progressing towards a more mixed-reality experience in a surgical environment.