Haptics: The state-of-the-art in building touch-based interfaces for virtual environments. -- Key research issues: model acquisition, contact detection, force feedback, compression, capture, and collaboration. -- Understanding the role of human factors in haptic interfaces. -- Applications: medical training, telesurgery, biological and scientific interfaces, military applications, sign language, museum display, and more. Haptics -- "touch-based" interface design -- is the exciting new frontier in research on virtual and immersive environments. In Touch in Virtual Environments, the field's leading researchers bring together their most advanced work and applications. They identify the key challenges facing haptic interface developers, present today's best solutions, and outline a clear research agenda for the future. This book draws upon work first presented at the breakthrough haptics conference held recently at USC's Integrated Media Systems Center. The editors and contributors begins by reviewing key haptics applications and the challenges of effective haptic rendering, presenting new insights into model acquisition, contact detection, force feedback, compression, capture, collaboration, and other key issues. Next, they focus on the complex human factors associated with successful haptic interfaces, examining questions such as: How can we make haptic displays more usable for blind and visually impaired users? What are the differences between perceiving texture with the bare skin and with a probe? In the book's final section, several of today's leading haptic applications are introduced, including telesurgery and surgical simulation; scientific visualization.

The problem addressed in this PhD thesis is how to offer an effective and efficient VR means of training in laparoscopic surgery. The question is to determine what makes it a useful didactic tool. This work is conceived to be a bridge between surgical tra

We humans are tribal, grouping ourselves by a multitude of criteria: physical, intellectual, political, emotional, etc. The Internet and its auxiliary technologies have enabled a novel dimension in tribal behavior during our recent past. This growing connectivity begs the question: will individuals and their communities come together to solve some very urgent global problems? At MMVR, we explore ways to harness information technology to solve healthcare problems - and in the industrialized nations we are making progress. In the developing world however, things are more challenging. Massive urban poverty fuels violence and misery. Will global networking bring a convergence of individual and tribal problem-solving? Recently, a barrel-shaped water carrier that rolls along the ground was presented, improving daily life for many people. Also the One Laptop per Child project is a good example of how the industrialized nations can help the developing countries. They produce durable and simple laptops which are inexpensive to produce. At MMVR, we focus on cutting-edge medical technology, which is generally pretty expensive. While the benefits of innovation trickle downward, from the privileged few to the broader masses, we should expand this trickle into a flood. Can breakthrough applications in stimulation, visualization, robotics, and informatics engender tools as ingeniously as the water carrier or laptop? With some extra creativity, we can design better healthcare for the developing world too.

Advances in graphic display technologies have made virtual reality (VR) and scientific visualization applications accessible to a wide user population. Unfortunately, few human interface tools exist to allow users to interact naturally with these powerful graphical environments. To address this need, Immersion Corporation has developed a user interface mechanism to allow natural manual interaction with 3-D environments which provides realistic force feedback to the user. This haphic display methodology combines high fidelity, low cost, and inherent safety to allow force reflection technology to become commercially feasible. The long term objective is to produce a 3-D haptic interface for virtual environments. Phase 1 focused on producing one-dimensional haptic interface hardware and incorporating this technology into a real world VR application. Immersion and the Ohio Supercomputer Center have worked together to produce a virtual simulation of epidural analgesia, a medical procedure that requires delicate needle insertions into the spinal column. The resulting VR simulation is so realistic in look and feel, it can actually be used as a training environment to teach doctors to perform the dexterous manual procedure, allowing them to learn manual technique and explore the associated physical sensations without the risks or costs associated with using real biological specimens. (AN).

The field of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has now taken centre stage in modern clinical practice. With ever changing technologies in the field of MIS, such as robotics, there is now the need to train the surgeon to the next degree. Training by simulation, whether virtual, hybrid, or real, allows the surgeon to rehearse, learn, improve or maintain their skills in a safe and stress free environment. Simulation Training in Laparoscopy and Robotic Surgery gives a true insight into the latest educational and learning techniques for new technologies in surgery. Written by an international team of experts, this illustrated text provides advice on specialised team training, non technical skills and simulation. Simulation Training in Laparoscopy and Robotic Surgery is an important training aide for surgeons and residents interested in developing skills in this field.

A Prototype Virtual Reality System for Preoperative Planning of Neuro-Endovascular Interventions -- Validation of Soft Tissue Properties in Surgical Simulation with Haptic Feedback -- Comparison of CAVE and HM for Visual Stimulation in Postural Control Research -- Virtual Vision Loss Simulator -- Reaction-Time Measurement and Real-Tune Data Acquisition for Neuroscientific Experiments in Virtual Environments -- A Preliminary Study of Presence inVirtual Reality Training Simulation for Medical Emergencies -- An Ali System with Intuitive User Interface for Manipulation and Visualization of 3D Medical Data -- A Haptic Surgical Simulator for the Continuous Curvilinear Capsulorhexis Procedure During Cataract Surgery -- Haptic Rendering of Tissue Cutting with Scissors -- Increasing face validity of a vascular interventional training system -- An Endoscopic Sinus Surgery Training System for Assessment of Surgical Skill -- Acquiring Laparoscopic Manipulative Skills: A Virtual Tissue Dissection Training Module -- Novel Force Resolver Designs for a Haptic Surgery Simulator -- Author Index

An important obstacle in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is the significant degradation of haptic feedback (sensation of touch) to the surgeon about surgical instrument's interaction with tissue. This monograph is concerned with devices and methods required for incorporating haptic feedback in master-slave robotic MIS systems. In terms of devices, novel mechanisms are designed including a surgical end-effector (slave) with full force sensing capabilities and a surgeon-robot interface (master) with full force feedback capabilities. Using the master-slave system, various haptic teleoperation control schemes are compared in terms of stability and performance, and passivity-based time delay compensation for haptic teleoperation over a long distance is investigated. The monograph also compares haptic feedback with visual feedback and with substitution for haptic feedback by other sensory cues in terms of surgical task performance. Sample Chapter(s). Introduction (1,826 KB). Contents: Introduction; Sensorized Surgical Effector (Slave); Haptic User Interface (Master); Unilateral Teleoperation Control; Bilateral Teleoperation Control; Substitution for Haptic Feedback: Bilateral Teleoperation Control Under Time Delay. Readership: Researchers in robotics, teleoperation, haptics, virtual reality, sensor technology, human machine interaction, and minimally invasive surgery and therapy.

Measurement of In-vivo Force Response of Intra-abdominal Soft Tissues for Surgical Simulation -- Estimation of Soft-Tissue Model Parameters Using Registered Pre- and Postoperative Facial Surface Scans -- Virtual Endoscopy using Spherical QuickTime-VR Panorama Views -- Integration of intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) dose distribution into the postoperative CT-based external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) treatment planing -- The application of eyeglass displays in changing the perception of pain -- Evaluation of Visualization Techniques for Image-guided Navigation in Liver Surgery -- Enhanced stereographic x-ray images -- The Communication Between Therapist and Patient in Virtual Reality: The Role of Mediation Played by Computer Technology -- Virtual Reality Assisted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the Treatment of Panic Disorders with Agoraphobia. -- Dextrous and Shared Interaction with Medical Data: stereoscopic vision is more important than hand-image collocation -- Usability Analysis of VR Simulation Software -- Elastically Deformable 3D Organs for Haptic Surgical Simulation -- A Generic Arthroscopy Simulator Architecture -- Virtual Reality in 3D Echocardiography: Dynamic Visualization of Atrioventricular Annuli Surface Models and Volume Rendered Doppler-Ultrasound -- Engineering and Algorithm Design for an Image Processing API: A Technical Report on ITK - the Insight Toolkit -- Finite Element (FE) Modeling of the Mandible: from Geometric Model to Tetrahedral Volumetric Mesh -- Author Index