Miguel A. Otaduy: Research

Medical Simulation

Many areas in medicine take advantage of computer science for better and safer treatment of patients. Among these, computer-based medical simulation is a technology that can aid surgical interventions at three different stages: training, planning, and the intra-operative stage itself. The advances in surgical procedures have promoted minimally invasive interventions as they notably reduce patient risk, but such interventions are difficult to master. Virtual surgery empowers training simulators where novice surgeons can practice at no risk. Thanks to medical simulation, surgeons can also plan their interventions and decide crucial aspects before surgery.

Medical simulation brings together solutions from computer graphics involving soft-tissue deformation, rigid bone animation, contact handling, soft-tissue cutting, or haptic feedback. All these together allow the simulation of surgical interventions in a fully immersive manner. Soft-tissue cutting, in particular, pushes the boundaries of current computer graphics simulation technology [→].

Medical simulation is a field that requires tight collaboration between computer science researchers, clinicians, and industry. Successful collaborations have lead, for example, to effective training simulators for hysteroscopy [→] or arthroscopy [→].

Collaborators: GMV, health care division [→], Swiss NSF Co-Me (computational medicine) project [→], Denis Steinemann (VirtaMed) [→], Markus Gross (ETH Zurich) [→].

Last modified June 10, 2009