aehrc.com - Australian e-Health Research Centre

Colonoscopy

We are partnering with Surgical Science on the colonoscopy simulator project since 2010. http://www.surgical-science.com/

The aim of this project is to build a  surgical training system to train novice gastroenterologists and to improve the skills of experienced gastroenterologists for performing colonoscopy. The colonoscopy simulator allows navigation and interaction with a 3D colon. It includes a novel haptic device for force feedback and adjustable realistic bio-mechanical models of the colon, whose complexity in geometry and pathology can be tailored to suit training needs.

Go to the Colonoscopy project page

Bronchoscopy

The aim of this project is to build a surgical training system which takes trainees through the complete path of learning to perform bronchoscopies. Beginning with basic navigation tasks, the system will add complexity gradually as the trainee progresses and learns more about the procedure in a safe environment with no risks to patients.

Go to the Bronchoscopy project page

Preoperative Planning

This project involves the development of a software tool, built using MILXSim, which allows for visualisation, manipulation and point identification in large 3D medical image data sets at interactive rates, thanks to the use of the hardware acceleration available from modern Graphics Processing Units.

Points of interest can be identified on 2D cross-sections of the data set, as well as on advanced 3D visualisations, and exported for post-processing, providing physicians with the quantitative data needed to improve preoperative planning and surgical success rates.

Go to the Preoperative Planning project page

Ultrasound

Despite the increasing adoption of other imaging modalities, ultrasound (US) guidance is widely used for surgical procedures and clinical imaging due to its low cost, non-invasiveness, real-time visual feedback. Many US guided procedures require extensive training and where possible training on simulations should be preferred over patients.

We are researching techniques to accurately simulate ultrasound images at interactive rates from sliced Computed Tomography volumes (and other data sources) using the computational power of the modern Graphics Processing Unit.

Go to the Ultrasound project page

MILXSim

Developed at the AEHRC, MILXSim is a flexible surgical simulation software platform which provides high performance rendering and simulation capabilities to the Surgical Simulation and Planning team.

The Platform is developed in C++ and uses OpenGL with advanced surface shading techniques to render photo-realistic surgical training scenes. It uses a plugin architecture to simplify development and deployment of new features and reduces the complexity of developing multi-threaded simulation scenes with a rich configuration system.

MILXSim exposes the power of the modern Graphics processing Unit using the NVIDIA CUDA programming API along with built in support for surface and volumetric meshing.

Go to the MILXSim project page