A Survey of Current Verification and Validation Methodologies for Interactive Image-Guided Surgery

The use of Interactive Image-Guided Surgery (IIGS) is fast becoming one of the most important advances of computers in medicine. Surgeons are now able to perform surgical procedures with more precision through the interactive use of computer generated 3-D images. An added advantage of IIGS is that the surgeon can track the estimated position of subcutaneous surgical instruments to perform minimally invasive surgery without the constant use of medical imaging machinery (x-ray, MRI) in the operating room. The benefits of IIGS are significant and include improvements in surgical outcome, reductions in recovery time, less pain and reduced exposure to radiation. The IIGS systems and software can also be used for the preoperative planning of surgical procedures and have been used to assist in the improvement of prostheses. The Verification and Validation (V&V) of interactive software that supports protocols such as IIGS is extremely difficult to perform. This paper reviews the methods currently used in industry and the state of the art in the research for the V&V of IIGS systems