Remote Assistance in Cervical Cancer Screening using Microsoft Hololens 2: An Augmented-Reality Based Approach

Abstract

India accounts for one of the highest populations of women with cervical cancer. The chances of mortality can be highly reduced if cancer is detected in the initial phases. Early screening via inspecting the biopsy samples is an effective way to detect cancer at its early stages. But this procedure requires a well-trained doctor to identify suspected regions for sample collection. The lack of specialized hospitals and adequately trained healthcare workers in rural regions of the country might lead to undetected cervical cancer. In this paper, we propose a system to remotely assist a healthcare worker in collecting a biopsy sample from the cervix by a trained practitioner using the Microsoft Hololens 2 headset. For this study, the proposed augmented reality system projects a 3D model of the cervix into the real environment, which can be remotely annotated. We plan to use this system for onsite data collection in later stages. Although the proposed solution has been tested for simulation environments with good results, we can foresee its huge potential for remote cervical cancer screening.