The design and implementation of virtual system for the robot-assisted setting-bone surgery

Current training methods for interns and residents in teaching hospitals do not adequately raise spatial perception about geometry and topology changes of skeletal morphology. Two reasons for the inability are trainees can only observe an operation before he participates in a surgery and preoperative rehearsal usually involves 2D (two dimensional) paper surgical simulations based on X-ray images. Moreover, surgery visiting doctors may also fail in real operations even after evaluating topology and geometry changes on rigid bones, prostheses and bone grafts of all procedures by 2D paper simulations. The failure rates were reported as 10-20% for setting-bone surgery. Computer-based surgery simulation represents a rapidly emerging and increasingly important area of research that combines a number of disciplines for the common purpose of improving health care. Generally, the goal of computer-based surgery simulation is to enable a surgeon to experiment with different surgical procedures in an artificial environment. We are developing a virtual surgical simulator specifically for HIT-RAOS, the robot-assisted setting-bone surgery system, which involves both various robots modeling and patients modeling. To satisfy requires on surgery programming and surgery rehearse based on special patient, a novel method of biological tissue model and simulation based special CT images includes 10 series is proposed in this article. Biological tissue geometry model, physical model and mechanical equilibrium equation based on strain energy function are built. Biomechanical equations are solved by finite element method. To make sure the simulator can be available in diverse operation systems, Java3D and VRML are chosen as the main developing tools. Based all the works above, As application examples, femur models and simulation are given and a cutting skin experiment was conducted, the results are contented. This validity of method and mathematics model is tested to compare simulation outcome with biomechanical experimentation