The aim of the COMPASS project is to develop an intelligent and cooperative assistance system that recognizes the surgeon’s cognitive navigation process by means of an understandable, immersive visualization and interaction and supports the surgeon in navigating through the surgical procedure with foresight.

As part of the COMPASS project, Nuromedia is leading the work on the interactive mixed reality environment for surgeons. As an interaction interface between technology platform and user, this represents a central component in the project in order to bring the technology developed in the project to the users. It follows a holistic approach that allows intuitive operation as well as input and output on different devices. The interaction patterns identified in the project will enable surgeons to obtain context-dependent information adapted to the respective output medium. The focus is on a high usability of the application. For this purpose, user interaction should act intelligently, i.e. conventional user guidance via menus and explicit selection of elements should become superfluous. The system should never stand in the surgeon’s way as a technical hurdle, but rather support him interactively in his actions.

The COMPASS project is funded by the BMBF KMU Innovativ programme