The Tartan

Students from the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) and Carnegie Mellon University are entering the augmented reality (AR) industry through their startup company, noVRel, which focuses on developing a hardware attachment for AR headsets that can be used during surgical procedures. Augmented reality is becoming more and more relevant in the field of medicine as physicians use it for both educational purposes and medical procedures.

The Tartan spoke to Tanvi Mittal, a senior at Carnegie Mellon majoring in mechanical and biomedical engineering and the chief operating officer (COO) of noVRel, to learn more about the startup.

The idea behind noVRel came from Sejeal Katiyar, the chief executive officer of noVRel, who began the venture. Katiyar connected with Dr. Andrews, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), who provided clinical input necessary for her to execute her project. But as the project progressed and other students joined in the effort, the project took a life of its own as a startup.

Funded by the Center of Medical Innovation (CMI) at Pitt, noVRel aimed to integrate lights, visual magnification loupes, and a fluorescent-sided microscope into an AR headset to provide surgeons easy access to patient data and increase the accuracy of routine procedures. To do this, the team, composed of seven members, had to tackle several questions posed by Dr. Andrews and Dr. Paul Andrew Gardner, the Peter J. Jannetta Endowed Chair of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and director of the Center for Skull Base Surgery.

“How do we attach those? How do we microsize them and attach them to a headset while also providing surgeons with all of the augmented reality capabilities? How can we display real-time patient data, intraoperative streaming, and all of that in front of the surgeon while they’re performing the procedure?” Mittal said.

Through hard work and innovation, the team executed proof of concepts (a demonstration that their proposed product is feasible and can address specific needs), made cardboard prototypes, isolated their minimum viable product, and now have a functional prototype on the Microsoft HoloLens.

From there, the team invited neurosurgeons from UPMC to try on the functional prototype and give their opinions on the product.

“We’ve been able to put it on our clinical advisors and conduct mock studies with them to check dexterity, efficacy, comfort, and usability,” Mittal said. Although their product has not been used in the clinical context, the feedback the team obtained from the mock studies provided a lot of quantitative and qualitative data.

The product is targeted to the needs of neurosurgeons as the field is more open to innovations.

“Neurosurgeons are the most open to change and most open to newer technology, and so we have found the most success with pitching it [the product] to neurosurgeons.” 

The product would give surgeons easy access to important patient information. “There are already so many screens that surgeons are paying attention to that we are essentially just condensing those screens into one, rather than having them crane their neck four different times or ask the scrub nurse if a patient’s vitals are okay.”

But that’s not all. Because the team’s product integrates several medical tools, it could potentially lower the costs of equipment purchased by hospitals, and reduce the amount of time per surgery.

“There’s a huge equipment cost, but more importantly, our device can cut down the amount of time spent per surgery,” Mittal said.

“Surgeons who do preoperative planning often make marks of where they want to do the incisions. Our device would allow you to bring those planned incision points as a visual overlay onto the patient during the procedure,” Mittal added.

Recently, noVRel placed second in the undergraduate track in the McGinnis Venture Competition. The team is also working on creating a prototype for the Apple Vision Pro.

Mittal joined noVRel through a mutual friend and began contributing ideas in the early stages of the product design. Now as COO, Mittal has expanded her work on the team beyond the technical side.

“We started filling in different roles and that’s when I took more of the financial role, managing investors and pitches.”

Mittal is thankful for the support she and the rest of the team have received from the Big Idea Center at the University of Pittsburgh and Project Olympus at Carnegie Mellon University.