Virtual orthopedic surgery training

Medicine is one of the most promising areas for emerging computer graphics and virtual reality techniques. VR training simulators let surgeons practice on virtual body tissue and get the same feedback they would experience in performing a real operation. Hybrid VR systems permit medical practitioners to view the patient overlaid with 3D data sets derived from 3D scanners, thus providing doctors and surgeons with pseudo X-ray vision. While currently available immersive VR surgery systems usually require expensive hardware and software, we developed a desktop VR orthopedic surgery training system that can run on commonly available personal computers.