The Critical Path from Tissue Slices to Surgical Simulation: What Do Surgeons Want?

Three themes: Building 3D Geometric Models from Slice Databases Segmentation and Extraction, and Virtual and Physical Modeling Creating an Educational Context with Information Frames The Hidden Curriculum of Surgery: Simulating Manipulations with Instruction Frames Building 3D geometric models from slice databases requires an aligned, (registered) volumetric dataset. Initial visualization of the anatomic region of surgical interest (AROSI), followed by segmentation and extraction of selected structures in each slice produces 2D masks for each anatomic structure. These are stacked to create 3D virtual anatomic models, either surface or volumetric, which can be transformed into physical 3D models by finite element, or other physical modeling algorithms. The methods for building 3D models will be discussed. Examples are: 1. the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs frog 2. the Stanford Visible Female (pelvis) segmentation is the selection of desired structures, and /or suppression of undesired structures prior to rendering extraction of selected structures in each slice allows for visualization of several types: 3D volumetric visualization and analysis can be done from unreconstructed images, reformated planes, curved planar reformatting, surface and volume rendering, maximum intensity projection, and shaded surface displays. transforming 3D volumetric models into physical models by finite element, or other physical modeling algorithms provides opportunity for deformations, incisions, etc. an application of such models, instrumented with accelerometers and pressure sensors is the crash testing of Cyber Dummies