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The Surgery Simulator

The goal of the presented work is the development of a surgical simulator for laparoscopic gynaecology. Major emphasis has been laid on a feasibly realistic simulation environment. In order to achieve this goal, the simulation system incorporates the following major components:

physical modeling of tissue deformation based on nonlinear finite element methods;
precise organ texturing for realistic rendering of the operation scene;
force feedback on the emulated manipulation tools.

Realistic simulation of the elastic deformation of abdominal organs and the resulting forces is only possible on the basis of a detailed anatomical model. The motion and deformation of organs is in many cases determined by morphological structures of small spatial extent (e.g., ligaments) posing a major challenge for the generation of the anatomical model. Customary radiological imaging procedures cannot provide the necessary information due to serious constraints in image contrast and resolution. The Visible Human Female data set of the National Library of Medicine, however, offers a consistent source of anatomical and morphological information by providing very high resolution and excellent tissue contrast at the same time. Accordingly, this dataset has been selected as the basis of the anatomical model-making.

Next: Organ Segmentation Up: Title Page Previous: Introduction Index: Full Text Index Contents: Conference Page