Surgeons from Johns Hopkins Hospital and hospitals in Israel successfully completed the second cadaver study using Augmedics’ xvision-spine system (XVS).

Using this augmented-reality (AR) surgical navigation system, 120 pedicle screws were placed in five separate cadavers with 96.7 percent accuracy.

“Typically what we have to do during minimally-invasive spine surgery is ... look away from where we’re working,” Dr. Timothy Witham of Johns Hopkins, said in a statement. “But xvision has all the image-guided information directly in front of you in the goggles you’re wearing, while you’re placing the instrumentation.”
XVS essentially provides the surgeon with ‘X-ray vision’ &mash; enabling them to navigation through a patient’s skin and tissue. It’s intended for use in minimally-invasive or open spine surgeries, but has potential for use in many other procedures.

During the procedure, it determines the position of the surgical tools and superimposes them on the patient’s CT data. The system’s transparent near-eye-display headset then lets the surgeon simultaneously view the patient and the navigation data without having to avert their eyes.



The objective of the cadaver study was to evaluate the accuracy of AR assisted pedicle screw insertion when compared to conventional pedicle screw insertion methods.

Post-procedural CT scans were obtained and screw accuracy was graded using the Gertzbein score and combined Heary-Gerzbein grading schemes by two independent neuroradiologists. The results showed that the AR method was 96.7 percent accurate and the conventional method was 94.6 percent.

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