A HYPERELASTIC-BOUNDARY-ELEMENT BASED SURGICAL-SIMULATOR FOR TRAINING SURGEONS IN A FEW EYE-HAND-COORDINATION TASKS RELATED TO MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY

摘要

The present invention relates to a surgical simulator that may be used to train surgeons in a few tasks related to minimally invasive surgery. To be specific, the simulator can be used to train surgeons in the following tasks: eye-hand coordination, poking the computer model of a liver or a kidney on a computer screen while the deformation is observed on the screen. The simulator makes use of hyperelastic boundary-elements. Moreover, the simulator makes use of the hyperelastic boundary-element-codes developed by this inventor. The simulator consists of a computer screen, a keyboard, a mouse, and a multi-core CPU. The mouse pointer (on the computer screen) represents the tip of a surgical tool. The simulator would include the three-dimensional geometry (3D computer model) of representative human kidney and human liver. The simulator has provisions for detecting the collision between the 3D model of the liver or the kidney on the screen and the mouse pointer (tip of the surgical tool) on the screen. In addition, the simulator has provisions for interactively displaying the deformed shape of the liver or the kidney on the screen, depending on the position of the mouse pointer (tip of the surgical tool) on the screen. This patent application uses many sentences from the same inventor™s another invention titled A surgical simulator for training surgeons in a few tasks related to minimally invasive surgery� (Indian patent application number: 201641031739, date of filing: September 17, 2016). However, the two inventions are based on two different technologies; the present invention is based on hyperelastic boundary-elements whereas the earlier invention is based on linear elastostatic boundary-elements. Moreover, the two inventions are two different and independent products. Neither of the inventions may be thought to be an improvement of the other. Of course, although they are two different products, they cater to the same customer group. Which of the two products is going to be more successful depends on whether the customer prefers the present invention or the previous invention; after selling sufficient number of products one can know which of the products is more successful. At least, extensive testing/validation is required before one can know which of the inventions is the better product.