VR SURGERY

On 14 April 2016 ,Ahmed – a surgeon, cancer specialist, and co-founder of virtual and augmented reality firm Medical Realities – is going to cut off a tumor from the colon of a London man in his 70s. 

That's a routine operation with no particular risk attached. But unlike any other operation, when Ahmed and his team remove the cancer, a 360-degree camera rig mounted over the operating table will capture the doctors' every movement in 4K and livestream it globally in VR. 

The broadcast will be available online and via apps for Android and iOS. Dr Ahmed says, close-up immersive streams could make trainees "feel part of the operation" more than if they were in the theatre. But surgery is a tactile job of lancets, scalpels and drills. 

To recreate that in VR, you need tactile feed. VR livestreams are the first step to what Ahmed calls "the virtual surgeon" – a project that involves shifting from live-capture VR to full computer-rendered simulations of surgical operations. And eventually, reactive virtual patients and gloves to provide tactile feedback. 

 "In my vision, you'll have a virtual body in front of you, you get haptic gloves, you pick up a scalpel, and you feel it normally, you make a cut, you see the incision, it's all realistic," he says. "Ultimately, people will be able to use VR to carry out operations and train themselves through virtual operations. That'd be our endgame." And that endgame might not be too far away: Ahmed predicts the necessary advances in VR and haptic technology could be just five years away. Ahmed has another theory, which relates to Ray Kurzweil's concept of singularity. 

The actual endgame, his argument goes, will be when AI and robots have developed to a point that they can carry out surgery better than human doctors can. "I call it 'surgical singularity'. And at some point it's definitely going to happen: it's just a question of when," he says. "In the meanwhile, we'll keep investing in VR. Robotic surgeons won't be here for a few years yet. Culled from wired.co.uk