Haptic vascular modeling and visualization in web-enabled interventional neuroradiology simulation system

Abstract

Virtual reality system for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is a challenging problem in the context of the World Wide Web. In this paper, we present a framework of web-enabled interventional neuroradiology simulation system with force feedback. Based on the hierarchical information from segmented human vascular images, we produce the small data-size control mesh of the vasculature and finally get a smooth vascular model. When a collision occurs, we calculate the volume of force feedback according to physical parameters under which the collision occurs and give the trainee a haptic feedback by the force feedback hardware that connects to the simulation system. Our method has three features: 1) the vascular model exhibits little memory consumption; 2) the vascular model delivers good rendering performance; 3) the collision detection along with force feedback computation model is a distributed one and can provide good real time reaction to the user. The initial result obtained from applying the method in our prototype of a web-enabled simulation system is encouraging: the 3D visualization of human vasculature and the haptic feedback mechanism present the trainee a vivid surgical simulation environment and the real-time force reaction is also an exciting feature for web-enabled surgical simulation system.