Simulation Techniques for Minimally Invasive Surgery

This paper provides an overview of the basic issues in surgery simulation development. Issues such as procedural versus skills simulators, and the relationship between the type of surgery and the necessary level of technology are addressed in turn. In addition, we demonstrate some of the results achieved at HT Medical, Inc. to show the applicability of the techniques described in the paper. Keywords: Surgery simulation, haptic interface, physical models 2. INTRODUCTION The success of flight simulators provides a convincing example of the importance of simulation technology when applied to the teaching of abilities which have an impact on