Visualizing the future of head and neck surgery: Applications for augmented and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are technologies rapidly expanding across the medical landscape. Within head and neck surgery, both AR and VR have been studied in a wide variety of applications. VR appears positioned to provide significant improvements in preoperative visualization, while AR is targeted towards intraoperative guidance. This is due in large part to AR's ability to preserve the real-world environment. Applications of AR include intraoperative guidance for bony reconstruction and tumor ablation, anatomic visualization during transoral robotic surgery, and localization of lymph nodes during sentinel lymph node biopsy. Registration of superimposed AR overlays to native patient anatomy remains a point of constant iteration as researchers seek to improve accuracy and advance towards markerless registration. This review serves to highlight the current state of AR and VR applications within head and neck surgery, notable studies, and their relevance for the future of the field.