The part about Cardboard just sounds like a PR stunt. From experience in surgery, for tricky stuff we would do 3D renders of blood vessels, etc and view them on a computer. One time for a spine case, we actually did a 3D print of the involved vertebrae that we actually physically manipulated as we planned our operation. This was 5-10 years ago.
Also given that the cost of an operation such as this in the multiple $100,000 range, the fact that they are resorting to Cardboard which actually is designed to be done cheaply and without too much consideration to fidelity of reproduction is very concerning.
TLDR: This is a publicity stunt. Good options for viewing 3D studies have been around for at least a decade. The fact that they relied on a cheap, non-verified system for making life and death decisions is problematic.
This story about Cardboard may be a PR stunt, but it may also be true that VR provided powerful insight that outperforms a flat screen or even a printed model.
VR is going to be used a lot more in situations where understanding physical environments is important, be it Nanotech, Healthcare, Architecture... simply because it is so immersive.
You are talking about the Oculus Rift which is a state of the art VR system that is expected to sell for more than $300. The article is talking about Cardboard which is a nice hack of a VR system that you can get for around $30.
The reviews basically claim that it is a good introduction to VR, but the quality is not great, it is easy to get nauseated, and it is not good for extended viewing. These are not characteristics you want in a system that you use to make critical life and death decisions where millimeters matters.
This is either a PR piece in which Cardboard did not play any significant role in treatment decisions, or if indeed Cardboard played a significant role in treatment decisions this is bordering on recklessness. Remember, this is not surgery in some remote area making do with whatever tools are available. No, this is taking place at a premier U.S. institution with state of the art facilities in a operation that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the institution used a snorkel pipe to intubate someone there would be an uproar. They are basically doing the equivalent with VR tech.
It's true that cardboard may have viable reasons for being mentioned in this context, but the onus is on the writer to prove that this isn't a sensational piece. As the article is right now, we can only speculate on good faith that they had good reasoning to use cardboard vs existing methods that others have mentioned.
If that's true, and they intentionally used sub standard technology for advertising purposes... then Google BETTER have paid for the surgery outright, and the parents have been unable to afford it otherwise. If not there are some SERIOUS ethical issues here.
It's unclear in what way the surgery was actually performed with Google Cardboard.
> "He uploaded the images of the baby's heart that he got on the CT scan [to a smartphone], and you put it into this cardboard box, and then in his office, I was looking at the baby's heart in a way that I had never been able to do before," said Nicklaus Children's Hospital Dr. Redmond Burke. "With the box, you get a stereoscopic image, and you can move around in the environment to see every part of the heart."
So basically, the surgery itself actually didn't use it at all, the doctor just used it as a stereoscopic viewer for a collection of CT images. But I'm not sure how this is really any different at all from just loading it into a 3D modeler and spinning the camera around. Sure, actual stereoscopic 3D probably makes it easier to get a feel for the dimensions, but there's nothing particularly revolutionary about it that should make an impossible surgery possible.
That's how I read it too. It sounds like Cardboard was used to prepare for the surgery or maybe just to confirm whether or not surgery was a viable option.
If we're going to accept that stereoscopy makes an objectively positive difference over a "flat 3D" presentation, does it not follow that the threshold for success in this case potentially fell within that difference?
I don't think it does. Remember, we're not talking about some kind of remote-operated robotic surgery rig, where the difference might actually affect the movements the surgeon uses during the surgery. This was just for looking at images in preparation for the surgery. Stereoscopic 3D can help get a feel for the depth quickly, but I don't think there's any fundamental difference between using that versus just spending a little more time working with a 3D model (moving a 3D model around gets you a feel for the depth too, just not as fast as stereoscopic imagery does).
Besides, we've had 3D monitors for years now. If there was a significant difference here, doctors would all have switched to using 3D monitors years ago to do this kind of preparation. Or at least, we'd have heard stories come out before now about individual doctors that did make the switch because it allows them to confidently perform surgeries they couldn't before.
First sentence:
"Google Cardboard... on your iPhone"
Immediately know that this article isn't written by someone with much tech exposure. Yes, it runs on an iPhone. No, it's not the only smartphone in existence, and certainly not Google's primary platform.
The Cardboard app works just fine on iOS. I played with a ViewMaster headset over the holiday break using my 5S and it was very comfortable. Image quality was great.
It's difficult to take this article seriously. There are lots of tools available and more appropriate to prepare surgeries using CT scans. Check echopixeltech for example.
Articles like these are just terrible. I can see this misleading people who don't read the article to think that you can perform surgery with a cellphone. At best, it's a sensational PR piece.
Also given that the cost of an operation such as this in the multiple $100,000 range, the fact that they are resorting to Cardboard which actually is designed to be done cheaply and without too much consideration to fidelity of reproduction is very concerning.
TLDR: This is a publicity stunt. Good options for viewing 3D studies have been around for at least a decade. The fact that they relied on a cheap, non-verified system for making life and death decisions is problematic.