At the Abbott Heart Symposium on TAVI, you had the chance to try a Virtual Reality headset.
This amazing tool lets you walk in and out of a heart and explore it from all angles!
With the headset on, I could see nothing but the heart and moved around using the two-hand controllers. An expert guided us, “slicing” the heart to show key features such as the aortic valve, mitral valve, and left atrial appendage.
This 3D view of the heart is great for beginners to understand its structure.
For Transcatheter Aortic Valve Intervention (TAVI), this VR model is a bit too complex for now. The CT scans, which I analyse using the 3Mensio software, already give us a lot of important information.
I can see how we might use this to plan complex congenital heart disease procedures. For example, by inserting differently shaped equipment into the virtual model. Currently, we do this by 3D printing a model and physically inserting the devices.
This VR system could become even more useful in the future, helping us plan heart procedures more effectively.
Article by Dr Malik, a UK leading cardiologist. He works at One Welbeck Heart Health – London’s Largest Private Cardiology Group, and at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK.