Extended Reality for the Operating Room (XR4OR)

Overview

This workshop focuses on how Extended Reality (XR) — whether for specific surgical tasks or for enhancing overall operating-room (OR) workflows and patient management — can directly improve surgical success and patient safety. Although XR technologies have made substantial progress in recent years, their full potential during surgery remains underexplored. The workshop will also include a section for ideation of novel use cases and research questions.

The overarching goal of any kind of technology in the operating room is to increase the success rate of operations and enhance patient safety. While XR has advanced a lot over the past decade and holds great promise for direct use in the operating room (OR), its potential has yet to be fully investigated. We believe that by making use of this technology *during* operations, ultimately, patients' well-being and other kinds of success metrics of operations can be improved.

With this workshop, we hope to bring together researchers from all sub-fields of XR (VR, AR, sound and haptic rendering, new materials, etc.); also, we invite researchers investigating AI to enhance surgical procedures and OR workflows. We aim to build a community around the emerging topic of ``Using Extended Reality Technologies in the Operating Room''.

This workshop is designed for researchers, practitioners, and professionals in the fields of XR aiming to utilize this technology in the OR. It is also suitable for those who are interested in advancing their understanding of the potentials of XR for improving surgical procedures. We welcome all individuals who are enthusiastic about exploring and advancing the use of XR in the OR. Expert knowledge of XR technologies and a profound understanding of surgical procedures is not mandatory.

While Extended Reality (XR)—encompassing Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)—has advanced significantly, its potential for direct use during surgical interventions is still underexplored. This workshop aims to survey existing uses and foster novel research ideas for leveraging XR during surgery to improve patient well-being.

We invite researchers from all sub-fields of XR (VR, AR, haptics, etc.) and AI to submit their work.

Topics & Focus

We invite submissions addressing technical and human factors challenges that must be solved in order to use XR in the OR.

Core Challenges

• Minimizing cognitive load and distractions.
• Seamless team interaction.
• Precise, fail-safe hand-eye coordination.
• Sterile, hands-free interaction.
• Handling extreme dynamic lighting (bright to dim).
• Automatic surgical activity recognition.

Submission Topics (Non-Exhaustive)

• High-precision OR tracking methods.
• Distraction-free HCI techniques.
• Intraoperative visualization (e.g., see-through HMDs, "X-ray vision").
• Remote consultation, telementoring, and proctoring.
• XR for minimally invasive and robotic surgery.
• Real-time interactive simulations and on-the-spot planning.
• Spatial AR and projection systems.
• Novel displays (e.g., auto-stereoscopic) and materials.
• 3D printing for the OR.
• AI for real-time surgical data analysis.
• AI-driven image segmentation and registration.

A prior workshop was held as a Dagstuhl Seminar

Workshop Format

The XR4OR workshop will be a half-day event designed to be interactive and community-building.

Components

• Presentations & Demos: Short talks or demonstrations based on accepted submissions.
• Interactive Sessions: Structured creativity sessions to foster new research ideas and community growth.

Submission Instructions

Authors are invited to submit Research Papers detailing their work, Position Papers describing specific challenges and potential solutions, or Work-in-Progress papers.. Please select one of the two tracks below.

Paper Specifications

Submission Requirements

Guidelines

• Papers should use the IEEE VR formatting guidelines.
• Please anonymize your submissions.
• Submit through the IEEE VR 2026 Precision Conference System (PCS): https://new.precisionconference.com/. New submissions should now go into the second, non-archival track. So, on the submission page, you can make a new submission by selecting "VR" in Society, "IEEE VR 2026" in Conference/Journal, and "IEEE VR 2026 Workshop: XR4OR non-archival submissions" in Track, then click "Go."

Important Dates (23:59 AoE)

For those authors who are okay with a notification after the early-bird deadline of the conference, we are extending the deadline in the non-archival track to Feb 20! Authors who have submitted by Feb 6 will get the notification by Feb 12.

Organizers

• Gabriel Zachmann, University of Bremen, Germany
• Peter Haddawy, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand and Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany
• Ron Kikinis, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
• Greg Welch, University of Central Florida, USA
• Sudanthi Wijewickrema, La Trobe University, Australia
• Torsten Kuhlen, RWTH University Aachen, Germany

Contact: xr4or-workshop at cs.uni-bremen.de