Virtual Medical Instruments for Orthopedic Surgery Training: A Hip Arthroplasty Application

Abstract

Surgical education for residents is provided through observership and participation with attending surgeons, cadaveric sessions and use of textbook illustrations. This paper describes the development of virtual medical instruments as a flexible, safe, and scalable learning option that can provide real-time feedback for the resident and increase entrustability by the attending surgeon when the resident is in the operating room. In orthopedic surgery, total hip arthroplasty (THA) is reproducible and hence was chosen as the simulated training surgery. The virtual medical instruments developed for this research is set in a fully immersive 3D virtual environment that can allow for innovative ways to train students and provide a new way of experiential education. With the goal of making the training anatomically accurate, users can interact with the virtual operating environment in real-time to ensure proper instrument usage. The virtual procedure also provides realistic visualization of the surrounding operating room and anatomical environment around the surgery site, marking important landmarks to the surgeon to enable effective surgical training.