A Survey of Visuo-Haptic Simulation in Surgical Training

Surgeons must accomplish complex technical and intellectual tasks that can generate unexpected and serious challenges with little or no room for error. In the last decade, computer simulations have played an increasing role in surgical training, pre-operative planning, and biomedical research. Specifically, visuo-haptic simulations have been the focus of research to develop advanced e-Learning systems facilitating surgical training. The cost of haptic hardware was reduced through mass scale production and as haptics gained popularity in the gaming industry. Visuo-haptic simulations combine the tactile sense with visual information and provide training scenarios with a high degree of reality. For surgical training, such scenarios can be used as ways to gain, improve, and assess resident and expert surgeons' skills and knowledge.

Haptic User Interfaces and Practice-based Learning for Minimally Invasive Surgical Training

Recent advances in haptic hardware and software technology have generated interest in novel, multimodal interfaces based on the sense of touch. Such interfaces have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about human computer interaction and open new possibilities for simulation and training in a variety of fields. In this paper we review several frameworks, APIs and toolkits for haptic user interface development. We explore these software components focusing on minimally invasive surgical simulation systems. In the area of medical diagnosis, there is a strong need to determine mechanical properties of biological tissue for both histological and pathological considerations. Therefore we focus on the development of affordable visuo-haptic simulators to improve practice-based education in this area. We envision such systems, designed for the next generations of learners that enhance their knowledge in connection with real-life situations while they train in mandatory safety conditions.