VR-based training and assessment in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia: from error analysis to system design.

If VR-based medical training and assessment is to improve patient care and safety (i.e. a genuine health gain), it has to be based on clinically relevant measurement of performance. Metrics on errors are particularly useful for capturing and correcting undesired behaviors before they occur in the operating room. However, translating clinically relevant metrics and errors into meaningful system design is a challenging process. This paper discusses how an existing task and error analysis was translated into the system design of a VR-based training and assessment environment for Ultrasound Guided Regional Anesthesia (UGRA).

Surface scanning soft tissues.

We investigate and report a method of 3D virtual organ creation based on the RGB color laser surface scanning of preserved biological specimens. The surface attributes of these specimens result in signal degredation and increased scanning time. Despite these problems we are able to reproduce 3D virtual organs with both accurate topology and colour consistency capable of reproducing pathological lesions.

Grid enabled remote visualization of medical datasets.

We present an architecture for remote visualization of datasets over the Grid. This permits an implementation-agnostic approach, where different systems can be discovered, reserved and orchestrated without being concerned about specific hardware configurations. We illustrate the utility of our approach to deliver high-quality interactive visualizations of medical datasets (circa 1 million triangles) to physically remote users, whose local physical resources would be otherwise overwhelmed. Our architecture extends to a full collaborative, resource-aware environment, whilst our presentation details our first proof-of-concept implementation.

Evaluation of the mechanical properties of human liver and kidney through aspiration experiments.

A proper mechanical characterization of soft biological tissues of the human body has a strong impact on several medical applications such as surgical planning, virtual reality simulators, trauma research, and for diagnostic purposes. Adequate experimental data are needed to describe quantitatively the mechanical behaviour of those organs. We present a technique for the acquisition of such data from soft tissues and its post processing, based on a continuum mechanics approach, to determine some parameters of the tissue's mechanical properties. A small tube is applied to the target organ and a weak vacuum is generated inside the tube according to a predefined pressure history. A video camera grabs images of the deformation profile of the aspirated tissue, and a pressure sensor measures the correspondent vacuum level. The images are processed and used to inform the fitting of uniaxial and continuum mechanics models. Whilst the aspiration test device is suitable for in vivo applications, under sterile conditions during open surgery, we hereby present first results obtained by testing cadaveric tissues.

Accessible haptic technology for drug design applications.

Structure-based drug design is a creative process that displays several features that make it closer to human reasoning than to machine automation. However, very often the user intervention is limited to the preparation of the input and analysis of the output of a computer simulation. In some cases, allowing human intervention directly in the process could improve the quality of the results by applying the researcher intuition directly into the simulation. Haptic technology has been previously explored as a useful method to interact with a chemical system. However, the need of expensive hardware and the lack of accessible software have limited the use of this technology to date. Here we are reporting the implementation of a haptic-based molecular mechanics environment aimed for interactive drug design and ligand optimization, using an easily accessible software/hardware combination.