Simulation techniques for minimally invasive surgery

Summary

Surgery simulation technology has made strong progress in recent years. This has come both from development of new basic technology, and from actual implementation of this technology in practical surgery simulation systems. This paper provides an overview of the basic issues in surgery simulation development. Issues such as procedural versus skills simulators, and the relationship between the type of surgery and the necessary level of technology are addressed in turn. In addition, we demonstrate some of the results achieved at HT Medical, Inc. to show the applicability of the techniques described in the paper.

Keywords:

• surgery simulation
• haptic interface
• physical models