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Developing a virtual reality environment for petrous bone surgery: a state-of-the-art review

Alan Jackson, Nigel W. John, Neil A. Thacker, John E. Gillespie, Enrico Gobbetti, Gianluigi Zanetti, Robert Stone, Alf D. Linney, Ghassan H. Alusi, Stefano Sellari Franceschini, Armin Schwerdtner, and Ad Emmen

March 2002

Abstract

The increasing power of computers has led to the development of sophisticated systems that aim to immerse the user in a virtual environment. The benefits of this type of approach to the training of physicians and surgeons are immediately apparent. Unfortunately the implementation of virtual reality (VR) surgical simulators has been restricted by both cost and technical limitations. The few successful systems use standardized scenarios, often derived from typical clinical data, to allow the rehearsal of procedures. In reality we would choose a system that allows us not only to practice typical cases but also to enter our own patient data and use it to define the virtual environment. In effect we want to re-write the scenario every time we use the environment and to ensure that its behavior exactly duplicates the behavior of the real tissue. If this can be achieved then VR systems can be used not only to train surgeons but also to rehearse individual procedures where variations in anatomy or pathology present specific surgical problems. The European Union has recently funded a multinational 3-year project (IERAPSI, Integrated Environment for Rehearsal and Planning of Surgical Interventions) to produce a virtual reality system for surgical training and for rehearsing individual procedures. Building the IERAPSI system will bring together a wide range of experts and combine the latest technologies to produce a true, patient specific virtual reality surgical simulator for petrous/temporal bone procedures. This article presents a review of the state of the art technologies currently available to construct a system of this type and an overview of the functionality and specifications such a system requires.

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Alan Jackson, Nigel W. John, Neil A. Thacker, John E. Gillespie, Enrico Gobbetti, Gianluigi Zanetti, Robert Stone, Alf D. Linney, Ghassan H. Alusi, Stefano Sellari Franceschini, Armin Schwerdtner, and Ad Emmen. Developing a virtual reality environment for petrous bone surgery: a state-of-the-art review. Journal of Otology & Neurotology, 23(2): 111-121, March 2002.

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Bibtex citation record

@Article{Jackson:2002:DVR,
    author = {Alan Jackson and Nigel W. John and Neil A. Thacker and John E. Gillespie and Enrico Gobbetti and Gianluigi Zanetti and Robert Stone and Alf D. Linney and Ghassan H. Alusi and Stefano Sellari Franceschini and Armin Schwerdtner and Ad Emmen},
    title = {Developing a virtual reality environment for petrous bone surgery: a state-of-the-art review},
    journal = {Journal of Otology \& Neurotology},
    volume = {23},
    number = {2},
    pages = {111--121},
    publisher = {Lippincott Williams \& Wilkins},
    address = {Baltimore, MD, USA},
    month = {March},
    year = {2002},
    abstract = {The increasing power of computers has led to the development of sophisticated systems that aim to immerse the user in a virtual environment. The benefits of this type of approach to the training of physicians and surgeons are immediately apparent. Unfortunately the implementation of virtual reality (VR) surgical simulators has been restricted by both cost and technical limitations. The few successful systems use standardized scenarios, often derived from typical clinical data, to allow the rehearsal of procedures. In reality we would choose a system that allows us not only to practice typical cases but also to enter our own patient data and use it to define the virtual environment. In effect we want to re-write the scenario every time we use the environment and to ensure that its behavior exactly duplicates the behavior of the real tissue. If this can be achieved then VR systems can be used not only to train surgeons but also to rehearse individual procedures where variations in anatomy or pathology present specific surgical problems. The European Union has recently funded a multinational 3-year project (IERAPSI, Integrated Environment for Rehearsal and Planning of Surgical Interventions) to produce a virtual reality system for surgical training and for rehearsing individual procedures. Building the IERAPSI system will bring together a wide range of experts and combine the latest technologies to produce a true, patient specific virtual reality surgical simulator for petrous/temporal bone procedures. This article presents a review of the state of the art technologies currently available to construct a system of this type and an overview of the functionality and specifications such a system requires.},
    url = {http://vic.crs4.it/vic/cgi-bin/bib-page.cgi?id='Jackson:2002:DVR'},
}