Update: The 360-degree VR surgery will be live streamed today, Thursday, at 1pm BST (2pm CEST, 8am EDT). You can watch it from within the free VRinOR app (iOS/Android), or there should also be a live stream on the Medical Realities website.

Original story

On May 22 2014, Mr Shafi Ahmed, consultant general colorectal, and laparoscopic surgeon at Barts NHS trust was in the news for bringing his craft a good deal closer to the gaze of his medical students.

By donning Google Glass as he removed tumours from the liver and bowel of a 78-year-old British man, he allowed 13,000 trainees and clinicians to witness a surgeon’s eye view of the procedure as it happened.

Now, the streaming surgeon is going live again. The Royal London hospital's operating theatre—with the surgery at centre stage—will be available for all to see live in virtual reality at lunchtime on Thursday, April 14.

On the day, anyone with a compatible iOS or Android mobile or tablet will be able to immerse themselves in the cut and thrust of 21st-century surgery. The streaming content isn't exclusive to the app, and will be available to view directly from the website of Medical Realities—the company driving this unique event. If the 360º demo footage is anything to go by, it’s going to be quite an eyeful.

Audio and video will be captured using a Mativision system that features an intricate array of six different cameras, and stitches the content on the fly. Mativision is better known for delivering immersive entertainment from live concerts. Its clients include Guns N' Roses axeman Slash, British rock group Muse, and Samsung for its S7 launch. Indeed, this sort of content goes down a treat with Samsung’s Gear VR goggles.

For a live gig setup, Mativision typically operates three of its cameras and, while there might be a couple used during the surgery on Thursday, apparently only one will be viewable during streaming.

Medical Realities is a collaborative venture that was founded in London by Shafi Ahmed and AR/VR evangelist Steve Dann, and draws upon a mix of clinical, educational, and CGI authoring talent.









The company hasn’t always relied on Mativision cameras, and has produced its own 360º surgical content, which was captured with a rig utilising six GoPro cameras. The main difference here being that the stitching wasn’t performed in real time.

There are several examples of this work on the Medical Realities YouTube channel, and you don’t need the VRinOR app to view this content, but the YouTube app will come in handy for mobiles. Although a stereoscopic viewing option is available for Android, you can navigate the scene without needing a VR viewer by simply moving your iOS or Android device. Alternatively, you can use a compatible browser (alas, not Safari) from a computer and drag the scene around as it plays.

While these videos capture the operating theatre environment, there’s a fair bit of burn out in the area where the surgery takes place, but you can still make out what’s going on by turning to view the video monitor.

The Mativision rig has greater control over exposure and is expected to deliver a much better result on Thursday.

The next page contains some graphic images of intestines.