Towards Realistic Surgical Simulation and Training Systems

目前，外科住院医师主要通过动物、尸体和病人的试验来获得和发展动手技能。然而，这些传统的训练方法有明显的缺点：动物的解剖结构与人类不同；尸体无法提供适当的生理反应；学生在病人身上练习是有风险的。****随着触觉学和计算机图形学的最新进展，基于视觉现实的外科模拟正在迅速兴起，并越来越多地被认为是传统训练方法的有价值的补充或替代。模拟器可以生成具有真实人体解剖结构和生理反应的虚拟患者，潜在地提供无风险的训练环境，可以对各种病理进行无限制的训练。除了这些好处，新的和复杂的外科手术可以安全地在模拟器上练习，然后再进行患者；学生可以按照自己的时间表练习；培训课程可以储存起来供医生日后回顾。****虽然少数公司开始提供不同质量的手术模拟训练系统，但没有模拟器能够提供与现实手术足够高的相似性。目前仍存在许多根本性的挑战和技术难题，如触觉界面的灵巧性、虚拟患者模型的准确性、碰撞建模、手术场景的实时沉浸式可视化等。***本研究中，我们提出开发实现高度逼真的手术模拟所必需的原理、算法和工具，使医疗机构能够使用模拟器培训外科医生。由于潜在的研究课题范围广泛，我们将我们的努力限制在一个问题的子集，包括：1。触觉反馈；2 .组织建模；验证标准。最后，预期的结果将通过环甲状软骨切开术模拟器的开发进行整合和验证

At present, surgical residents acquire and develop hands-on skills mainly through trials on animals, cadavers and patients. There are, however, obvious disadvantages to these conventional training approaches: animals have different anatomies from humans; cadavers are unable to provide appropriate physiological responses; it is risky when students practice on patients.****    With recent advances in haptics and computer graphics, visual reality based surgical simulation is rapidly emerging and increasingly perceived as a valuable addition to, or replacement of, traditional training methods. Simulators can generate virtual patients with realistic human anatomy and physiological responses, potentially providing a risk-free training environment with the possibility of unlimited training over a wide range of pathologies. In addition to these benefits, new and complex surgical procedures can be practiced safely on a simulator before proceeding to patients; students can practice on their own schedules; training sessions can be stored and later reviewed by physicians.****    While a small number of companies are starting to offer surgical simulation training systems of varying quality, no simulators are able to provide a sufficiently high degree of resemblance to real-life surgery. There still exist numerous fundamental challenges and technical difficulties, such as the dexterity of haptic interfaces, accuracy of virtual patient models, collision modelling, real-time and immersive visualization of the operating scene, etc. ***    In this research, we propose to develop principles, algorithms and tools that are essential to realize highly realistic surgical simulation, enabling medical institutions to train surgeons using simulators. Due to the broad scope of potential research topics, we limit our efforts to a subset of problems including: 1. haptic feedback, 2. tissue modelling, and 3.validation criteria. At the end, the anticipated results will be integrated and validated by the development of a cricothyroidotomy simulator.***