Interactive X-ray and proton therapy training and simulation.

Purpose: External beam X-ray therapy (XRT) and proton therapy (PT) are effective and widely accepted forms of treatment for many types of cancer. However, the procedures require extensive computerized planning. Current planning systems for both XRT and PT have insufficient visual aid to combine real patient data with the treatment device geometry to account for unforeseen collisions among system components and the patient.

Liver pathology simulation: algorithm for haptic rendering and force maps for palpation assessment.

Pre-operatory gestures include tactile sampling of the mechanical properties of biological tissue for both histological and pathological considerations. Tactile properties used in conjunction with visual cues can provide useful feedback to the surgeon. Development of novel cost effective haptic-based simulators and their introduction in the minimally invasive surgery learning cycle can absorb the learning curve for your residents.

Haptic simulator for liver diagnostics through palpation.

Mechanical properties of biological tissue for both histological and pathological considerations are often required in disease diagnostics. Such properties can be simulated and explored with haptic technology. Development of cost effective haptic-based simulators and their introduction in the minimally invasive surgery learning cycle is still in its infancy.

Generating classes of 3D virtual mandibles for AR-based medical simulation.

Introduction: Simulation and modeling represent promising tools for several application domains from engineering to forensic science and medicine. Advances in 3D imaging technology convey paradigms such as augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality inside promising simulation tools for the training industry.

Methods: Motivated by the requirement for superimposing anatomically correct 3D models on a human patient simulator (HPS) and visualizing them in an AR environment, the purpose of this research effort was to develop and validate a method for scaling a source human mandible to a target human mandible within a 2 mm root mean square (RMS) error.

Simulating 3-D lung dynamics using a programmable graphics processing unit.

Medical simulations of lung dynamics promise to be effective tools for teaching and training clinical and surgical procedures related to lungs. Their effectiveness may be greatly enhanced when visualized in an augmented reality (AR) environment. However, the computational requirements of AR environments limit the availability of the central processing unit (CPU) for the lung dynamics simulation for different breathing conditions.

Comprehensive 3D visual simulation for radiation therapy planning.

External beam radiation therapy is concerned with the precise and accurate delivery of radiation for cancer treatment. Highly-collimated beams are generated in a linear accelerator, consisting of several hardware components that move around the patient in a complex geometry to allow radiation target the tumor from every possible angle. The complex arrangements of the hardware components may give rise to collisions among the components or between the components and the patient.

Distributed augmented reality with 3-D lung dynamics--a planning tool concept.

Augmented reality (AR) systems add visual information to the world by using advanced display techniques. The advances in miniaturization and reduced hardware costs make some of these systems feasible for applications in a wide set of fields. We present a potential component of the cyber infrastructure for the operating room of the future: a distributed AR-based software-hardware system that allows real-time visualization of three-dimensional (3-D) lung dynamics superimposed directly on the patient's body.