Improvement of a virtual pivot for minimally invasive surgery simulators using haptic augmentation

Abstract

With rapid development of minimally invasive surgery, proficiency with intricate skills is becoming a greater concern. Consequently, the use of out-of-operating room training has increased significantly through employing high-fidelity and anatomically-correct graphics and haptic interfaces in virtual reality simulations. The effort in developing surgical simulators for generic minimally invasive procedures is still, however, suboptimal for many haptic implementations. A main aspect of such simulations is the pivoting behavior of the surgical tool realized using the haptic device. This paper investigates the limitation of a fullyvirtual implementation of the pivot and the ability to augment haptic interfaces to achieve a natural representation of forces. The design and implementation of two surgical tool pivoting techniques are introduced. Furthermore, a phantom is constructed from synthesized components to be used to measure and reproduce realistic mechanical properties of the anatomical model and pivot behavior.