A novel hybrid rendering approach to soft tissue cutting in surgical simulation

As a feasible alternative approach, computer-based surgical simulators have been developed over the past few decades to enhance traditional surgical training. But most surgery simulators still suffer from stability and efficiency problems when simulating complex surgical procedures like cutting with respect to the graphical rendering. For naturalistic rendering, the response of soft tissue during the cutting operation should be cautiously verified, analyzed and simulated. In this paper, a novel hybrid rendering approach to tracheotomy simulation combining traditional mesh-based rendering with emerging point-based rendering is proposed, where mesh-based rendering algorithm is applied on the non-surgical area while point-based rendering algorithm is applied on the surgical area. Central to our method is different appropriate rendering methods applied to the two regions respectively, resulting in a contribution to the speed up of the calculation. The approach has been integrated into our virtual tracheotomy surgery training prototype system. The details and results of experiments indicate that our hybrid rendering approach is suitable in the design of surgical simulators. It can keep the visual reality while significantly increasing the efficiency and stability for simulation of soft-tissue's cutting.