Google Glass helps cardiologists complete difficult coronary artery blockage surgery

November 20, 2015

Google Glass allowed the surgeons to clearly visualize the distal coronary vessel and verify the direction of the guide wire advancement relative to the course of the occluded vessel segment. (credit: Maksymilian P. Opolski et al./Canadian Journal of Cardiology)

Cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology, Warsaw, Poland have used Google Glass in a challenging surgical procedure, successfully clearing a blockage in the right coronary artery of a 49-year-old male patient and restoring blood flow, reports the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Chronic total occlusion, a complete blockage of the coronary artery, sometimes referred to as the “final frontier in interventional cardiology,” represents a major challenge for catheter-based percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), according to the cardiologists.

That’s because of the difficulty of recanalizing (forming new blood vessels through an obstruction) combined with poor visualization of the occluded coronary arteries.

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) is increasingly used to provide physicians with guidance when performing PCI for this procedure. The 3-D CTA data can be projected on monitors, but this technique is expensive and technically difficult, the cardiologists say.

So a team of physicists from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling of the University of Warsaw developed a way to use Google Glass to clearly visualize the distal coronary vessel and verify the direction of the guide-wire advancement relative to the course of the blocked vessel segment.

Three-dimensional reconstructions displayed on Google Glass revealed the exact trajectory of the distal right coronary artery (credit: Maksymilian P. Opolski et al./Canadian Journal of Cardiology)

The procedure was completed successfully, including implantation of two drug-eluting stents.

“This case demonstrates the novel application of wearable devices for display of CTA data sets in the catheterization laboratory that can be used for better planning and guidance of interventional procedures, and provides proof of concept that wearable devices can improve operator comfort and procedure efficiency in interventional cardiology,” said lead investigator Maksymilian P. Opolski, MD, PhD, of the Department of Interventional Cardiology and Angiology at the Institute of Cardiology, Warsaw, Poland.

“We believe wearable computers have a great potential to optimize percutaneous revascularization, and thus favorably affect interventional cardiologists in their daily clinical activities,” he said. He also advised that “wearable devices might be potentially equipped with filter lenses that provide protection against X-radiation.


Abstract of First-in-Man Computed Tomography-Guided Percutaneous Revascularization of Coronary Chronic Total Occlusion Using a Wearable Computer: Proof of Concept

We report a case of successful computed tomography-guided percutaneous revascularization of a chronically occluded right coronary artery using a wearable, hands-free computer with a head-mounted display worn by interventional cardiologists in the catheterization laboratory. The projection of 3-dimensional computed tomographic reconstructions onto the screen of virtual reality glass allowed the operators to clearly visualize the distal coronary vessel, and verify the direction of the guide wire advancement relative to the course of the occluded vessel segment. This case provides proof of concept that wearable computers can improve operator comfort and procedure efficiency in interventional cardiology.