The Need

Modernity has brought with it increased complexity in many areas of our lives, an important one being the healthcare industry. Surgical procedures require increased precision while employing intricate methods. With approximately 20 million surgeries performed each year in the United States alone, it is necessary that medical teams are fully prepared and the risk to the patients is minimized.

The Technology

Researchers at Ohio State have developed a pre-surgical planning tool in order to meet the demands of the healhtcare industry. This invention imports clinically acquired image data with minimal user interaction into a virtual surgical simulator that provides visual, haptic, and aural feedback.

The surgical simulator includes: 1) a novel 3D volume renderer that can portray bone transparency similar to that observed during surgery, 2) a unique physics-based dynamics approach for 3D fluid simulation, 3) a constraint-based algorithm for the haptics bone-drill interaction, and 4) real-time rendering of large volume data sets.

Commercial Applications

• Healthcare providers
• US Government
• Research facilities (Universities)

Benfits/Advantages

• Easy uploads for mininmal user input
• Provides clinically relevant feedback for surgical rehearsal and planning
• Can be readily adapted to other bone related surgical procedures