Media Releases >
Media Releases Archive
> Joystick with attitude to train new surgeons
Joystick with attitude to train new surgeons
Document Tools
May 1, 2003
Surgeons in training at the centre for surgical education at Vancouver General hospital will soon be suturing virtual wounds and making incisions in virtual organs using leading edge technology created at Simon Fraser University.
For the past seven years, professors and students in SFU’s computing science, engineering science and kinesiology departments have been collaborating on a project to create graphical software and hardware that can help surgeons learn how to do laparoscopic surgery in a virtual environment rather than on patients or live animals.
Laparoscopic, or minimally invasive, surgery uses tiny cameras and long-stemmed instruments to perform exacting surgery inside the body while the surgeon views his progress on a video screen. The new software and hardware will teach surgeons to coordinate their hand movements and the remote instruments while watching a video screen, which is not how they’re accustomed to operating, says Shahram Payandeh, professor of engineering science. "Their eyes, which is the camera, are looking at the operating site from another angle," he explains. "Everything that is on the right is now on the left and flipped over."
A joystick with attitude, developed by engineering science faculty and students, even provides surgeons with the feel of the needle pulling on tissue or the knife blade cutting through tissue as they use the joystick to manipulate the instruments inside the body.
Funded by the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, a government-sponsored centre of excellence, the project involved significant technical challenges, says Payandeh. "We had to engineer the joystick device for controlling the instruments, create the interface with the computer, develop the graphical haptic feedback renderings (technology which mimics sensory output, such as the resistance of a knife slicing through flesh) and establish lessons for the training modules.
Payandeh says SFU’s research and development for the haptic feedback graphics is world-leading. For example, the software developed for the cutting tasks, in which a knife cuts through a simulated organ, opening up a path, is at the forefront of software development. Now, he says, they must develop the training context for this task, such as making an artery bleed beneath the cut if the surgeon cuts too deeply.
Surgeons at the VGH surgical education centre will soon be using and assessing this new virtual environment so SFU can move toward commercializing the technology, which already has a provisional patent.
Payandeh and his associates, computing science professor John Dill
and kinesiology professor Christine Mackenzie, dream of the day when their technology will eventually be used to map out a virtual environment based on data taken from a patient’s magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasound so that doctors could practice a procedure before they operate.
—30—
Contact
Shahram Payande, 604.291.4290; shahram_payande@sfu.ca
Diane Luckow, SFU Media & PR, 604.291.3210; dluckow@sfu.ca
For the past seven years, professors and students in SFU’s computing science, engineering science and kinesiology departments have been collaborating on a project to create graphical software and hardware that can help surgeons learn how to do laparoscopic surgery in a virtual environment rather than on patients or live animals.
Laparoscopic, or minimally invasive, surgery uses tiny cameras and long-stemmed instruments to perform exacting surgery inside the body while the surgeon views his progress on a video screen. The new software and hardware will teach surgeons to coordinate their hand movements and the remote instruments while watching a video screen, which is not how they’re accustomed to operating, says Shahram Payandeh, professor of engineering science. "Their eyes, which is the camera, are looking at the operating site from another angle," he explains. "Everything that is on the right is now on the left and flipped over."
A joystick with attitude, developed by engineering science faculty and students, even provides surgeons with the feel of the needle pulling on tissue or the knife blade cutting through tissue as they use the joystick to manipulate the instruments inside the body.
Funded by the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, a government-sponsored centre of excellence, the project involved significant technical challenges, says Payandeh. "We had to engineer the joystick device for controlling the instruments, create the interface with the computer, develop the graphical haptic feedback renderings (technology which mimics sensory output, such as the resistance of a knife slicing through flesh) and establish lessons for the training modules.
Payandeh says SFU’s research and development for the haptic feedback graphics is world-leading. For example, the software developed for the cutting tasks, in which a knife cuts through a simulated organ, opening up a path, is at the forefront of software development. Now, he says, they must develop the training context for this task, such as making an artery bleed beneath the cut if the surgeon cuts too deeply.
Surgeons at the VGH surgical education centre will soon be using and assessing this new virtual environment so SFU can move toward commercializing the technology, which already has a provisional patent.
Payandeh and his associates, computing science professor John Dill
and kinesiology professor Christine Mackenzie, dream of the day when their technology will eventually be used to map out a virtual environment based on data taken from a patient’s magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasound so that doctors could practice a procedure before they operate.
—30—
Contact
Shahram Payande, 604.291.4290; shahram_payande@sfu.ca
Diane Luckow, SFU Media & PR, 604.291.3210; dluckow@sfu.ca