WIRED Staff
Science

Slideshow: Pass the Virtual Scalpel, Nurse

Surgical simulators that mimic the look and feel of flesh-and-blood organs could give doctors the crucial hands-on training they need to get the bloody job done right. By Lakshmi Sandhana.
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Screen shots of surgical cutting of a kidney model with image based rendering techniques for enhanced visual rendering. The model is obtained from the Visible Human dataset and has 1080 polygons.Image: Courtesy of Professor Suvranu De, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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A schematic of the surgery simulation process.

Image: Courtesy of Professor Suvranu De, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Smoke generation using PAFF. In a texture image used for smoke particles is shown. We use a single image frame of size...

Smoke generation using PAFF. In (a) a texture image used for smoke particles is shown. We use a single image frame of size 32- by 32-bit. A sequence of snapshots for smoke generation is shown in (b). In (c) we show smoke generation during the simulation of cauterization on a model of the stomach.

Image: Courtesy of Professor Suvranu De, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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A schematic of the localized PAFF (LPAFF) scheme. In LPAFF, the computations are performed on a local â??hiveâ?? of nodal points which moves with the tool tip.

Image: Courtesy of Professor Suvranu De, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Images of the tool-tissue interactions.

Image: Courtesy of Professor Suvranu De, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute