Motivations: Cataract surgery has made important advances over the past twenty years, and every year, more than five million people in the United States and in Europe undergo cataract surgery. This procedure is however complex to perform as it requires good hand-eye coordination as well as accurate microscopic manipulations of surgical instruments. Therefore a long training period is mandatory to acquire these necessary skills. Current method of training are based on companionship and this apprenticeship model depends on the availability of the instructor and potentially exposes patients to complications due to the inexperience of the operator. In this context, recent reports have demonstrated the advantages and added value of computer-based simulation over conventional training.Therefore, new training simulation systems for cataract surgery have been recently developed. Typically, these simulators offer a combination of simulation software that aims at reproducing some parts of the cataract surgery procedure and hardware devices that allow the surgeons for realistic interaction with the simulation.
Funding: INRIA InterMeds
Website: none. A public demonstration is available @ Euratechnologies
Related Publications:
Motivations: the objective of the InterMedS project is to foster various competencies scattered across several research groups to accelerate research activities in the Medical Simulation domain. The underlying objective is to facilitate the development of novel and computationally efficient algorithms, and to simplify their transfer toward the clinical and industrial worlds. To achieve these objectives it is mandatory to initiate and strengthen research activities in the field of Medical Simulation. We believe this could be achieved initially through the mechanism of a national initiative at INRIA, later followed by the creation of an international consortium of academic, clinical and industrial partners. An early version of what the national initiative could become already exists, mainly composed of researchers from INRIA. This group collaboratively develops the SOFA framework, and communicates regularly through weekly audio-conferences as well as quarterly meetings. This could be used to bootstrap a stronger, research-oriented collaboration across multiple INRIA teams. Moreover, the structure of a national initiative would fit perfectly the multidisciplinary nature of Medical Simulation research. The collaborative framework of a national initiative seems also well adapted to the future integration of clinical and industrial partners, essential to the success of this type of program. (source: Stephane Cotin)
Funding: INRIA AE (Action Nationale d'Envergure).
Website: InterMeds website
Related Publications (Simulation of Interventional Radiology Procedures):
Motivations: many vascular pathologies can now be operated on in a non invasive way thanks to interventional radiology. Using such technique, therapeutic tools are inserted within the arteries, up to the lesion through a catheter. As a particular case, intracranial aneurisms present like herniae onto the arterial wall. The endovascular treatment consists in filling the aneurismal cavity by placing coils. These are sorts of long platinum springs that, once deployed, wind into a compact ball. Considering the location of the lesion, close to the brain, and its small size, a few millimeters, the interventional gesture requires a good planning and cannot but be performed by a very experienced surgeon. A simulation tool of the interventional act, available in the operating room, reliable, adapted to the patient's anatomy and physiology, would help to plan the coil placement, train the surgeon, and improve the medical training to the technique.
Funding: this project was funded during two years (2006-2008) as an INRIA cooperative research action (ARC). People from INRIA Lorraine / MAGRIT project, INRIA Nord-Europe / Alcove project and the University Hospital of Nancy, Department of Interventional Radiology were involved in Simple.
Website: http://simple.loria.fr
Related Publications:
Motivations: Strokes or aneurysms rupture are a major leading cause of death in the U.S. A non-invasive therapy is performed using intra-vascular navigation. Following femoral arterial puncture, a guidewire-catheter combination is advanced under fluoroscopic guidance through the iliac arteries, into the aortic arch, and inside the common carotid artery. This allows entry into the internal carotid artery and the cerebral circulations in the brain. This guidance is provided by intravascular angiogram, obtained during contrast agent (CA) propagation, which defines the abnormal areas, guides the instrument movement, and verifies thetreatment. Because the treatment is delivered only under image-based guidance, the dedicated skill of instrument navigation and the thorough understanding of vascular anatomy are critical to avoid irreversible complications. EVE project is a first step toward general Interventional Radiology simulation. The research aspects of this project involve medical image processing for 3D reconstruction of the vascular network, new compact multi-level representations for vascular networks, Finite Element Modeling of medical devices, collision response strategies for highly constrained deformable objects, and fluroroscopic image synthesis. All these algorithms need to be designed to run in real-time on a single processor machine.
Funding: ---
Website: http://www.medicalsim.org/endovas.htm
Related Publications:
Motivations: The main objectives of the SOFA framework are: Simplify the development of medical simulation systems by improving interoperability / Evaluate and validate new algorithms / Accelerate the prototyping of simulation systems by promoting component reusability / Promote collaboration between research groups / Facilitate technology transfer between research and industry. Although several attempts have been proposed in the past few years at designing software toolkits for medical simulation, we propose a different approach, through a very modular and flexible software framework, while minimizing the impact of this flexibility on the computation overhead. To achieve these objectives, we have developed a new architecture that implements a series of innovative concepts. Also, by developing the SOFA framework collaboratively with scientific experts in the different areas of medical simulation, we believe we can provide state-of-the-art solutions that are generically applicable, yet computationally efficient.
Funding: INRIA ADT (Action de Developpement Technologique)
Website: http://www.sofa-framework.org
Related Publications: