IEEE VR 2026 Workshop on Extended Reality for the Operating Room (XR4OR) Call for Submissions to the non-archival track. Workshop Web Page: https://cgvr.cs.uni-bremen.de/xr4or/ 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 an interactive section for ideation of novel use cases and research questions. 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. Topics This workshop will explore and investigate all possibilities and options that modern XR technologies provide to improve surgical procedures or tackle specific challenges in the operating room. Some of these challenges are: - Avoiding any distraction of surgeons, keep their cognitive load to a minimum - Manage seamless interaction among the entire operating team - Improve precise and fail-safe hand-eye coordination - Automatic surgical activity recognition - Challenging lighting conditions in the OR that range from extremely bright (on situs) to rather dim - Hands-free, intuitive, and efficient interaction with technology, since surgeons must maintain their sterility Potential topics for submissions to this workshop include, but are not limited to: - Novel methods to achieve high-precision tracking in the OR - HCI techniques that are distraction-free - Presentation of information and visualizations during surgery, e.g., by using see-through HMDs - Kinds of ``X-ray vision'' to visualize inner anatomical structures of the patient - Presenting, at any point during the procedure, the relevant information to the surgeons and the team - Mitigating the constraints and challenges of the lighting conditions placed on projection-based or see-through systems - Remote consultation or coaching (telementoring, remote-proctoring) - 3D printing for the OR, e.g., patient-specific, 3D-printed inner structures - Novel materials, e.g., for highly-deformable or printable displays - Projection systems and other novel displays, e.g., auto-stereoscopic - Tele-presence and tele-coaching enabled by XR technologies - Using spatial AR in the OR - Real-time, interactive simulations in the OR, e.g., for on-the-spot planning of next steps in the procedure - XR technologies for minimally-invasive surgeries - Touch-less interaction and other kinds of novel interaction modalities to maintain sterility - AI tools for real-time analysis, interpretation, and visualization of surgical data - AI-driven image segmentation and registration to align medical images with patient anatomy in AR displays More topics are expected to emerge from the discussions at the workshop. A prior workshop was held as a Dagstuhl Seminar: https://doi.org/10.4230/DagRep.15.2.21 Format of the Workshop The workshop will include presentations by the participants based on their submissions and, with equal importance, interactive sessions, where participants will become creative. The presentations will be short talks, both for archival and non-archival submissions; the interactive sessions will be held in a structured manner using suitable creativity techniques. At the end, outcomes of this process will be presented to all, and steps to continue growing the community will be discussed. Submission Instructions Authors are invited to submit results of their research, work-in-progress, or position papers: o Research papers: 4-6 pages + references (up to 2 pages) o Work-in-progress papers: 2-4 pages + references (1 page) o Position papers: 1-2 pages + references (1 page) With this call, we invite authors to submit papers to the second, the non-archival track; in this track, accepted submissions will not be included in the digital library (non-archival submissions). Thus, non-archival submissions can be published elsewhere as-is. Authors of accepted submissions will present their paper at the workshop and, thus, benefit from the feedback. Also, all accepted submissions will be put on the web page of this workshop. Authors are encouraged to submit videos (where applicable) to aid the program committee in reviewing their submissions. Please anonymize your submissions. Authors of accepted papers are expected to register and present their papers at the workshop. Papers should use the IEEE VR formatting guidelines ( https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/ ) and be submitted through the IEEE VR 2026 Precision Conference System (PCS). When starting your submission, please make sure to select the relevant track for the workshop "IEEE VR 2026 Workshop Extended Reality in the Operating Room (XR4OR)". Your submission should be made through PCS: https://new.precisionconference.com/ 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" in Track, and click "Go." Review process Each submission will be peer-reviewed by at least two domain experts. Review decisions are final. Authors of accepted papers must submit a revised version, addressing the feedback provided in the reviews. Important Dates For non-archival submissions: February 6: Submission deadline February 12: Notification of acceptance February 15: early-bird registration deadline February 20: Camera-ready deadline March 22: Workshop (9:30 - 13:00 KST) All dates are meant 23:59 AoE. Organizers Gabriel Zachmann, University of Bremen, Germany Peter Haddawy, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand 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 mail: xr4or-workshop@cs.uni-bremen.de