Surgeons may one day be able to train in virtual reality, operating on highly realistic computer-generated organs that they can see and feel.
Researcher Suvranu De and his team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are developing a surgery simulator similar to the flight simulators used to train pilots. The medical training system would allow surgeons to manipulate virtual human organs in real time, learning and acquiring crucial skills without using cadavers or risking human life.
De's team is pursuing a grand vision of developing the holy grail of simulation technology: a "virtual human." This giant database of human anatomy would look and feel just like a flesh-and-blood person. Surgeons would be able to see a completely realistic virtual model of a human being, accurate down to the last detail, and touch and manipulate it using haptic interfaces such as a SensAble Technologies' Phantom devices or Meta Motion's CyberGlove.
"A virtual human can be pushed and prodded pretty much as you would a real human," says De. "Surgeons would never have to go to cadavers for any of their training. One could use such a model to plan surgical processes even before such surgeries are performed."
To be able to operate effectively, surgeons have to be able to feel how human tissue responds to direct touch and how it interacts with surgical instruments. Creating this interaction in real time with three-dimensional graphical models that act and react like human tissue remains a major technological challenge for makers of surgical simulators.
But De and his team think they have developed a solution: a computational tool called the point-associated finite field approach that allows any kind of matter to be simulated in real time. The software is complex enough to model tissue response accurately, allowing surgeons to touch and interact with virtual tissue realistically. It can even model blood flow.
Currently working on improving its computer models, De's team initially intends to develop training modules for specific tasks such as grasping, cauterizing and surgical cutting. The team hopes to piece together individual tasks later to generate complicated, multistep procedures. De says his team is getting closer to
a viable prototype to use in tests with doctors.
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