virtual environment searching

Virtual reality based surgical simulators can provide a new method for apprenticeship which is at least as efficient as the traditional one and which could reduce the length of training. It is very important to carry out the same surgical procedure on a variety of different case studies that correspond to several virtual patients, each of them exhibiting a specific difficulty depending on the different anatomy or pathology. In order to obtain a realistic simulation it is necessary to use a specific haptic device which is able to replicate the force feedback sensations relating to the interaction in the virtual environment on the user. The aim of this paper is to present a virtual surgical simulator to perform training on different cases of a specific surgical procedure; the building of the virtual environment is based on images of real patients and a Web Portal is used to search a specific pathologies or anatomic structures; this information are included in the metadata associated with the virtual environment