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This systematic review provides an overview of augmented reality (AR) and its benefits in craniomaxillofacial surgery in an attempt to answer the question: Is AR beneficial for craniomaxillofacial surgery? This review includes a description of the studies conducted, the systems used and their technical characteristics. The search was performed in four databases: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science. All journal articles published during the past 11 years related to AR, mixed reality, craniomaxillofacial, and surgery were considered in this study. From a total of 7067 articles identified using AR- and surgery-related keywords, 39 articles were finally selected. Based on these articles, a classification of study types, surgery types, devices used, metrics reported, and benefits were collected. The findings of this review indicate that AR could provide various benefits, addressing the challenges of conventional navigation systems, such as hand–eye coordination and depth perception. However, three main concerns were raised while performing this study: (1) it is complicated to aggregate the metrics reported in the articles, (2) it is difficult to obtain statistical value from the current studies, and (3) user evaluation studies are lacking. This article concludes with recommendations for future studies by addressing the latter points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood flow patterns in the human left ventricle (LV) have shown relation to cardiac health. However, most studies in the literature are limited to a few patients and results are hard to generalize. This study aims to provide a new framework to generate more generalized insights into LV blood flow as a function of changes in anatomy and wall motion. In this framework, we studied the four-dimensional blood flow in LV via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in conjunction with a statistical shape model (SSM), built from segmented LV shapes of 150 subjects. We validated results in an in-vitro dynamic phantom via time-resolved optical particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. This combination of CFD and the SSM may be useful for systematically assessing blood flow patterns in the LV as a function of varying anatomy and has the potential to provide valuable data for diagnosis of LV functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is a poorly understood, accelerated form of coronary artery disease in patients that underwent heart transplantation (HT), and substantially contributes to post-transplantation morbidity and mortality. Increasing evidence shows an active role for epicardial fat (EF) in the development of coronary artery disease, as a result of its inflammatory properties. Yet, whether the amount of EF is also related to CAV remains unknown. Hence, we investigated the association of epicardial fat volume (EFV) with CAV. For this pilot study, we included post HT-patients whom underwent cardiac computed tomography (CCT) for CAV screening between February 2018 and January 2019. CCT included a non-enhanced CT (NECT) and CT angiography (CCTA). Using the NECT, we quantified the EFV using an automated algorithm (Fig 1.). CAV was graded on CCTA similar to the guidelines of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. The association of EFV with the presence and grade of CAV was investigated using binary- and ordinal logistical regression models, adjusted for recipient age and gender, time since HT and number of rejections pre-CCT. We included 74 patients, with a median age of 45 years [IQR 27-51] at HT of whom 29 were women. Median time since HT was 10.0 years [IQR 8.0-15.3]. CAV was prevalent in 28 (38%) patients, of whom 17 (61%) had CAV 1, 5 (18%) had CAV 2 and 6 (21%) had CAV 3. Median EFV was 198.5 [IQR 123.4-262.1] mm3. The median EFV was larger with higher CAV grades: 162.2 (CAV 0), 211.5 (CAV 1), 230.0 (CAV 2) and 278.3 (CAV 3) mm3 (p=0.031). Albeit not statistically significant, we found an association of EFV with the presence of CAV (odds ratio (OR) per 1-standard deviation increase in log-transformed EFV: 1.48 (95%CI: 0.80-2.72), p=0.21) and with CAV grade (OR 1.52 (95%CI: 0.85-2.71), p=0.15). Our preliminary results show a promising trend towards an association of the amount of epicardial fat and the presence of CAV, which should be confirmed in larger studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]