[iva] IEEE VR 2026: CfP to Workshop on Extended Reality in the Operating Room

[Gabriel Zachmann]

IEEE VR 2026 Workshop on 
   Extended Reality for the Operating Room
                         (XR4OR)


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 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 to increase 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. 


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: 2-3 pages + references (1 page)
o  Position papers: 1-2 pages + references (1 page)

Authors are given a choice of two formats:
the first format invites submissions that will, in case of acceptance, be
published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (archival submissions);
the second format invites submissions without a corresponding publication
in the digital library (non-archival submissions).
In both cases, authors of accepted submissions will present their paper at
the workshop.
And in both cases, accepted submissions will be put on the web page of this
workshop.

Non-archival submissions can be published elsewhere as-is, while archival
publications can be published elsewhere, if the original workshop paper is
expanded or modified significantly.

On your submission, please clearly mark which option you prefer in case of
acceptance.

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)".



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 archival submissions: 
January 14: Submission deadline 
January 22: Notification of acceptance 
January 29: Camera-ready deadline 
March 21/22: Workshop


For non-archival submissions:
January 30: Submission deadline
February 13: Notification of acceptance
February 15 (approx.): early-bird registration deadline (tentative)
February 20: Camera-ready deadline
March 21/22: Workshop

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 at cs.uni-bremen.de (mailto:xr4or-workshop at cs.uni-bremen.de?subject=XR4OR%20Workshop:)

 
 
 
 
Unsubscribe (https://uni-bremen.dmanalytics2.com/unsubscribe?d=OdOmRIF6TZKLUvz3ucQ1tg&e=iva-list%40lists.uni-bielefeld.de&a=AZsNrhMZcIGxFPyLtPXwJA&b=AZsNbkVgfXOi1H9biNpm_Q) • Update Email Preferences (https://uni-bremen.dmanalytics2.com/update-preferences?d=OdOmRIF6TZKLUvz3ucQ1tg&e=iva-list%40lists.uni-bielefeld.de&a=AZsNrhMZcIGxFPyLtPXwJA&b=AZsNbkVgfXOi1H9biNpm_Q) • View Online (https://uni-bremen.dmanalytics2.com/campaign?d=OdOmRIF6TZKLUvz3ucQ1tg&e=iva-list%40lists.uni-bielefeld.de&a=AZsNrhMZcIGxFPyLtPXwJA&b=AZsNbkVgfXOi1H9biNpm_Q&t=1)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uni-bielefeld.de/mailman2/unibi/public/iva-list/attachments/20251211/0e0e6843/attachment-0001.html>