Haptic ventriculostomy simulation in a grid environment

We present a full featured surgery simulator for endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) in an interactive grid environment. The basic ventriculostomy simulator introduced previously has been extended with new 3D models and animation methods for raising the simulation realism. It enables full haptic interaction with textured deformable models of a hydrocephalic configured human ventricular system derived from MR‐data. Visual effects like bleeding in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) have been implemented for faulty interactions during training sessions which are recorded in a database for further evaluation. Based on the training data comparative studies were carried out whereas the benefits of virtual reality (VR)‐based training have been demonstrated. Furthermore, KisGrid is presented as an interactive grid environment for real‐time surgical simulators. It enables collaborative and supervised haptic training over networks with access to remote surgical models and hardware. The grid applet ViCoM is introduced as a tool for audio‐visual communication, monitoring, and training session archiving. Long distance tests have been successfully carried out for multicast video conferencing, training session monitoring, and haptic surgical collaboration with deformable models. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.