Virtual reality (VR)
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that allows users to fully immerse themselves in a computer-generated environment. It is a system that allows users to experience a virtual space created by a computer as if it were reality by wearing VR goggles. It can be experienced through sensory stimuli such as sight and sound, and is becoming increasingly popular in the entertainment field such as movies and games. For example, there are an increasing number of attractions at amusement parks and theme parks where you can experience them by wearing VR goggles, and you can also experience virtual spaces as VR movies and VR games by wearing VR goggles in movie theaters or at home, so it is becoming more familiar to us.
As for the use of VR in the medical field, because it has the characteristic of being able to display 3D images, it is being used in various forms, including medical education and clinical applications such as surgical support. On the other hand, VR goggles have issues such as VR sickness because they block the view of the outside world, and the weight and fit of the goggles themselves mean that using them for long periods of time can be physically tiring, so there are hopes for improvements to the devices in the future.
Augmented reality (AR)
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that displays digital information overlaid on the real world. Through a smartphone screen, virtual objects created with computer graphics (CG) can be reflected on the actual scenery, and displayed as if they existed in the real world. In recent years, AR has become famous as a technology that has developed in the entertainment field, such as smartphone game apps. In the industrial and architectural fields, virtual products and buildings created with CG can be displayed in real space. In the automotive industry, parking assistance systems using the camera image from the rear of the car have become common. AR technology is also used in translation systems using the Google Translate camera on smartphones (Fig. 1).
AR technology has also begun to be used in the medical field, using various interfaces. VR completely immerses you in a “virtual space,” but AR has a big difference in that it displays virtual information overlaid on a “real space,” and is actually used to support surgery. The figure shows a technology that displays a virtual image planned before surgery in the surgical field through the display of a surgical microscope (Fig. 2).
