Surgical techniques have evolved from direct hands-on maneuvers to indirect minimally-invasive procedures, learning which involves using virtual simulation environments with standardized exercises typically comprising scene representation, collision-detection, force feedback, and rendering. Key challenges are the need to improve speed and realism of the simulation while being run on consumer-grade computing platforms.;A prototype implementation using the NVIDIA GeForce 7600GS is presented. Interactive surface wrapping models a cloth-like surface into a closed mesh while the deformation phase is a GPU-based parallelized Implicit Euler method. Point-based haptic interaction with virtual coupling provides tactile feedback. The results show significant speedups, upto a factor of 6.5 times, for the GPU-based simulation over the CPU.;This thesis aims at overcoming these challenges by developing an algorithm to utilize the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) as a parallel processor. The approach presented consists of three phases: off-line surface wrapping, implicit integration for deformation, and tactile feedback.
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