Fuzzy Rule-Based Evaluation for a Haptic and Stereo Simulator for Bone Marrow Harvest for Transplant

Virtual Reality has been used to simulate procedures in several fields, especially those where critical tasks are involved as simulation of some invasive medical procedures. We are developing a low-cost haptic and stereo simulator for bone marrow harvest for transplant. The system includes an intelligent evaluation procedure that allows classify the trainee learning. The present paper describes the proposed system, details of its implementation and results we just obtained. Introduction Bone marrow transplant, despite commonly held perceptions, is not a usual surgery. Basically, the bone marrow transplant consists of an infusion of healthy cells, capable of generating identical copies of themselves and producing blood cells. This blind invasive procedure is relatively simple, but the success of the procedure will depend on the physician’s dexterity, and his ability to manipulate the needle in a complex anatomical region. This work presents a virtual reality system to simulate bone marrow harvest for transplant. Bone marrow transplant, despite commonly held perceptions, is a semiinvasive procedure that depends on the physician's dexterity, once there is no visual information of the patient body internal structure. In this simulator we are using a haptic device and stereo view glasses to give an immersion degree satisfactory to the user trainee. To give an evaluation of the training we add to the system an intelligent evaluation tool based on fuzzy rules. This way, the expert doctor knowledge is modeled by fuzzy rules by four variables to give a classification of the procedure performed by the trainee.