Volume Interactions

Volume Interactions Pte Ltd was a company that pioneered in the 1990s the use Virtual Reality technology in surgery planning.^[1][2][3] The company created and marketed the Dextroscope, the first commercial surgical planning system that used virtual reality principles going beyond the mouse and keyboard. The Dextroscope introduced a variation of Virtual Reality technology that didn't use Head-Mounted display (using instead a stereoscopic display that housed a two-handed 3D user interface) that provided a natural and comfortable interface to work with multi-modality 3D medical images for long periods of time. This environment was applied to the planning of patient-specific surgical approaches for several clinical disciplines, including neurosurgery,^[4][5][6] Ear-Nose-Throat,^[7] and liver surgery.^[8] The Dextroscope received world-wide attention by being involved in the planning of several craniopagus twin separations, most notably the Zambian twins (1997) and the German twins (2004^[9][10]) at Johns Hopkins Hospital led by Dr Benjamin Carson, and the Nepali twins separation^[11] at the Singapore General Hospital in 2001.^[12]

The Dextroscope was launched in Europe in 2000 and subsequently in Asia and the USA (2006^[13]). The company later introduced the Dextrobeam, a product designed to make 3D medical stereoscopic presentations to large audiences, using stereoscopic projection systems.^[14]

The company Quality Management System complied with the requirements of ISO 13485:2003 and the products were listed in the Singapore Medical Device Registration (SMDR) by the Health Sciences Authority of Singapore.^{[citation needed]}

The Dextroscope and Dextrobeam received USA FDA 510(K) - class II (2002) clearance, CE Marking - class I (2002), China SFDA Registration - class II (2004) and Taiwan Registration - type P (Radiology) (2007).

The company was a spin-off company from the Kent Ridge Digital Labs research institute in Singapore. The company was founded in 2000 in Singapore by Luis Serra, Ng Hern, Ralf A Kockro, Eugene CK Lee and Chris Goh with seed capital from Life Sciences Investments (LSI) Pte Ltd., a co-investment fund of the Singapore Economic Development Board Investments Pte Ltd. (EDBI). It was later acquired by^[15] the Bracco Group in 2002. Volume Interactions ceased commercial operations in 2008.