VIRTUAL-REALITY SIMULATOR TO PROVIDE TRAINING FOR SENTINEL LYMPH NODE SURGERY USING IMAGE DATA AND DATABASE DATA

摘要

A virtual-reality method for surgical training simulates the task of detecting sentinel lymph nodes using a nuclear uptake probe. The simulator can be used with lymphoscintigraphic clinical imaging data to provide patient-specific training scenarios. In yet another embodiment, the apparatus can use a database representing mathematical phantoms to simulate different patient sizes, node distributions, node uptakes, and combinations thereof.