Research and publications

Technology built for discovery

Immersive visualization is not only a tool for research — it is also something worth researching. What readers see, how consistently they measure it, and whether spatial review changes the questions a team asks are all open questions, and some of them have now been examined with Vea.

Discuss a research project Read the publications

Axial cardiac magnetic resonance image used in imaging research. — Axial cardiac MR. Image: Bionerd, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Peer-reviewed literature

Where Vea appears in the record

Two peer-reviewed studies name the platform in their methods. Both examine measurement agreement against established planning tools, in aortic valve work. We have summarized what the authors reported and linked the originals, so you can disagree with our reading of them.

Validation study · Vea named in the methods

Reliability of Immersive Virtual Reality for Pre-Procedural Planning for TAVI: A CT-Based Validation

Carabetta N, Panuccio G, Giordano S, Sorrentino S, Mazza GA, Sabatino J, Canino G, Leo I, Salerno N, Strangio A, Petullà M, Torella D, De Rosa S
Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease, 2025; 12(12): 481

Fifty consecutive TAVI candidates. Annulus and left ventricular outflow tract measurements taken in the immersive environment were compared with the same measurements from established CT analysis tools. The authors reported strong correlation and excellent consistency for annular measurements (ICC 0.93) and good consistency for the outflow tract (ICC 0.90), and reported higher concordance with the valve actually implanted when planning included the three-dimensional assessment.

Independent work by a group at Magna Graecia University, Catanzaro, with a co-author at Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité, Berlin. The platform was provided for research and educational use; the authors declare no conflict of interest.

Research area: Structural heart · TAVI planning · measurement agreement

DOI 10.3390/jcdd12120481 PubMed 41440860

Feasibility and reproducibility study · Vea among the software used

Virtual reality for pre-procedural planning of valve-in-valve transcatheter aortic valve implantation

Kanschik D, Haschemi J, Klein K, Maier O, Binneboessel S, Tokhi U, Afzal S, Serruys PW, Tsai TY, Antoch G, Lichtenberg A, Ballázs C, Stadnik D, Scherner M, Kelm M, Zeus T, Jung C
European Heart Journal — Digital Health, 2025; 6(3): 372–381

Twenty patients who had undergone valve-in-valve TAVI. Measurements made in virtual reality were compared with an established planning package by analysts blinded to each other, and eight physicians rated aspects of planning with and without the immersive views. Correlation between methods ran from 0.874 to 0.994 and intraclass correlation from 0.897 to 0.986. The qualitative part reported that spatial relationships — particularly distances between the virtual prosthesis, the coronary ostia and the sinotubular junction — were easier to assess in the immersive view.

Carried out at University Hospital Düsseldorf. The VR models were built with software from VMersive and Vea Simulations, Warsaw.

Research area: Valve-in-valve TAVI · spatial relationships · reader reproducibility

DOI 10.1093/ehjdh/ztaf024 PubMed 40395420

Editorial commentary

Enhanced spatial understanding through virtual reality in valve-in-valve TAVI planning

Skalidis I, Neylon A, Akodad M
European Heart Journal — Digital Health, 2025; 6(4): 526

An editorial in the same journal responding to the study above, discussing what improved spatial understanding does and does not yet settle in valve-in-valve planning.

Research area: Commentary · valve-in-valve TAVI

DOI 10.1093/ehjdh/ztaf046 PubMed 40703132

Randomized controlled trial · field research

Impact of Virtual Reality on Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

Kanschik D, Steinhoff D, Klein K, Lichtenberg A, Ballázs C, Stadnik D, Scherner M, Antoch G, Kelm M, Zeus T, Jung C
Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, 2026; online ahead of print, e018922

140 patients randomized at University Hospital Düsseldorf between April and August 2024, comparing planning from multislice CT alone against the same planning supplemented with virtual reality. It is the most rigorous study published so far on immersive planning in TAVI.

Listed as field context. The full text is not openly available to us, so we make no claim about which VR software was used in this trial.

Research area: TAVI planning · randomized trial

DOI 10.1161/CIRCIMAGING.125.018922 PubMed 42017242

What this evidence does and does not show. These are early studies in small, single-center cohorts, and they examine agreement between measurement methods and how readers perceive spatial relationships. They do not establish that immersive review improves survival, reduces complications or makes any procedure safer, and no publication changes the regulatory position: Vea is supplied for research and educational use, is not CE marked as a medical device and has not been cleared or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Where a study reports a benefit, that is the authors' finding in their setting, not a claim we make about yours.

Background reading

The wider field

Useful starting points if you are new to immersive cardiovascular visualization. None of these involve us — they are here because they are the papers we would hand a new collaborator.

Advanced Medical Use of Three-Dimensional Imaging in Congenital Heart Disease: Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, and Three-Dimensional Printing

Goo HW, Park SJ, Yoo SJ · Korean Journal of Radiology, 2020; 21(2): 133–145

DOI 10.3348/kjr.2019.0625

Role of virtual reality in congenital heart disease

Ong CS, Krishnan A, Huang CY, Spevak P, Vricella L, Hibino N, et al. · Congenital Heart Disease, 2018; 13(3): 357–361

DOI 10.1111/chd.12587

Fast-track virtual reality for cardiac imaging in congenital heart disease

Raimondi F, Vida V, Godard C, Bertelli F, Reffo E, Boddaert N, et al. · Journal of Cardiac Surgery, 2021; 36(7): 2598–2602

DOI 10.1111/jocs.15508

Clinical Value of Virtual Reality versus 3D Printing in Congenital Heart Disease

Lau I, Gupta A, Sun Z · Biomolecules, 2021; 11(6): 884

DOI 10.3390/biom11060884

Collaboration

How research work with us actually runs

Four shapes cover almost everything we are asked for. All of them start with a call and a page of written scope before anyone commits anything.

Platform access for a study

You have the question, the cohort and the approvals. We provide the platform for research and educational use, and enough support that the technology is not the variable that breaks your study.

Measurement and reproducibility work

Defining a protocol precisely enough that different readers produce the same number, then testing whether they do. This is where most imaging studies quietly succeed or fail.

Software built for the study

When the work needs something that does not exist — a specific workflow, an export, an experimental interface — we build it as a work package inside the project.

Feasibility before a grant

A small, quick exercise to establish whether the idea holds up, producing the figures and the honest limitations you need for an application.

Typical research areas

Retrospective cardiovascular imaging studies
Patient-specific 3D reconstruction and measurement agreement
Virtual reality in imaging review and procedural preparation
Congenital and structurally complex anatomy
Medical education research and immersive teaching
Simulation and virtual device positioning as a research method

What stays with your institution

Study design, protocol and statistical plan
Ethics approval and regulatory correspondence
Patient data, consent and data governance
Authorship decisions, which we never ask to influence

On data. We do not ask for identifiable patient data. Where anonymized datasets cannot leave your network, the work is done on your side — that constraint is normal and we plan around it rather than argue with it.

Have a question that needs a dataset behind it?

Tell us the question and the cohort you have access to. If we think the technology will not help, we would rather say so at the first call than at the first review.

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