Human Middle Ear Anatomy Based on Micro-Computed Tomography and Reconstruction: An Immersive Virtual Reality Development

Background: For almost a decade, virtual reality (VR) has been employed in otology simulation. The realism and accuracy of traditional three-dimensional (3D) mesh models the middle ear from clinical CT have suffered because their low resolution. Although micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) imaging overcomes resolution issues, its usage platforms limited due to high computational requirements. aim this study was optimize high-resolution 3D human model suitable for viewing manipulation an immersive VR environment using HTC VIVE headset (HTC Valve Corporation, USA) enable seamless anatomical visualisation experience while preserving accuracy. Methods: A reconstructed micro-CT data with 28 μm voxel were optimised by tailoring surface polygon counts, file size, loading time, frame rate. Results: optimized surrounding structures (polygon counts reduced 21 million polygons 2.5 million) could be uploaded visualised at 82 frames per second no VR-related motion sickness reported. Conclusion: High-resolution can visualized after optimisation. To our knowledge, is first report on overcoming translational hurdle applications VR.