HoloLens in China

"For HoloLens, remote surgery is currently the most practical application scenario."

In January 2018, Wuhan Union Hospital instructed Bozhou People's Hospital of Xinjiang to complete three complicated fractures. The patients suffered from femoral neck fractures, intertrochanteric fractures, and lumbar vertebrae fractures. However, the doctors in the Wuhan Xiehe Hospital, who were in charge of the instructions, did not personally go to Xinjiang. They only used Microsoft Hololens mixed reality headsets to guide them through virtual reality.

During the operation, the doctors in both hospitals wore Microsoft Hololens, and the medical perspective images of the patients were visible in the field of vision. Based on Hololens' mixed-reality performance, doctors at the Wuhan Xiehe Hospital as a guide can see both the patient's perspective and the doctor's operation at the Bozhou People's Hospital. At the same time, they can be tagged on the perspective map. Bozhou doctors can also see it directly.

This cooperation is more efficient and direct than medical assistance based on flat-panel displays and cameras. This is one of the cases that Microsoft recently introduced at the news conference of Hololens' first year of commercial use in China.

A year ago, Microsoft began to promote Hololens with its own startup incubator and other methods. At that time, Hololens was just a cool looking hardware and could not see any valuable things. Microsoft invited vendors such as Volvo to build an experience districts, yet the application scenarios they see are all just display-oriented, such as showing a virtual car to a customer at a car sales shop or presenting students with a virtual solar system for astronomical teaching purposes.

A year later, most of the companies Microsoft invited to demonstrate had come up with similar cases of "displaying". For example, visits to virtual plants exhibited by Guangzhou Honda, bank virtual assistants exhibited by financial companies, etc. But overall, medical care is currently one of the few ways for HoloLens in China that seems great.

From the perspective of the existing business model, sales presentations and teaching applications are not always able to create the business value. After all, virtual vehicles are not as good as real-life vehicles. At the same time, the market proves that education scenarios require low-cost equipment such as Google Chromebook, which has a market share relative to Microsoft and Apple.

According to Microsoft, the experiment of mixed reality in medical care is only just beginning. At present, taking the application shown by Wuhan Union Medical Hospital as an example, the hospital does not need to replace the existing CT and MRI equipment. Just rely on an additional computer to generate an almost real-time image with three-dimensional model viewed on Hololens.

Hololens can superimpose this model directly on the patient in the field of view. The surgeon on the operating table solves the problem of the operative field of vision. In traditional trauma surgery, doctors must be able to determine the location of blood vessels and lesions layer by layer, which is now directly visible in Hololens.

However, this technology is also flawed because real-time images are not yet available. The existing technology must first give the patient a medical image and then send it to the operating room. In the developer's presentation, they are trying to solve this problem. Their goal is to achieve "perspective eye", which allowing doctors to see the patient's perspective in real time in HoloLens. In addition to the development of applications, this also requires the upgrading of medical imaging equipment.

HoloLens, which sells for more than 20,000 RMB, is almost negligible compared to the expensive CT and MRI machines purchased by hospitals. The price is not a major problem in HoloLens' medical applications. Local resources, human resources are the most difficult issues.

In addition, the Microsoft Hololens team stated in May last year that Hololens' own narrow field of vision needs to be iterated and can be resolved in the subsequent release of the updated product.

Back to the topic of "mixed reality," it is actually a concept that Microsoft has combined "virtual reality" with "augmented reality".

In early May, Beat Saber, a virtual reality game on Steam, received a lot of praise. This VR music game is to use light sabers to cut notes. At present, it is under development preview status. More than 98% of the nearly 3,000 user reviews are praises. It is also the highest-selling and best-rated in Steam VR games.

But except this game, virtual reality seems to have entered another downturn. Google, which has the highest mobile market share, did not mention VR at the annual developer conference this year. The mobile phone-based virtual reality "daydreaming plan" announced last year did not reappear; HTC and Facebook announced the more expensive and cheaper headsets respectively; the former $800 is too high while the latter seems not much use other than watching videos and playing mini-games.

VR and AR are probably still waiting for a really good entertainment, or a revolutionary industry application.

Source: Qdaily

https://www.qdaily.com/articles/53450.html