Surgery with X-ray vision.

Endoscopic skull base surgery happens millimeters from the carotid artery, the optic nerve, and the brain. Conventional navigation displays that anatomy on a separate monitor — the surgeon glances away from the field to check position. Mixed reality changes the geometry of attention: a HoloLens headset overlays the navigation data onto the surgical view itself, so critical structures and tumor margins are visible exactly where they are.

The group's work spans pre-operative planning in virtual reality — rehearsing endoscopic corridors to the craniovertebral junction before the first incision — through intraoperative AR in lateral skull base procedures, and a field-defining scoping review mapping where AR/VR genuinely help in rhinology versus where the evidence is still thin.

This is not far-future speculation — AR-assisted visualization is part of how complex skull base cases are planned and performed at Mount Sinai today, layered on top of standard image-guided navigation in every case.