3D interactive virtual environments for minimally invasive vascular surgery

Recently, the development of minimally invasive surgery has led to the emergence of the new research area: minimally invasive vascular surgery simulation. The goal of the surgery simulation is to provide a new way to enable the trainees to obtain the core skills of the techniques. One of the key component of the simulation for core skills training in minimally invasive vascular surgery is how to develop 3D real-time computer-based virtual environments. In this paper, we present the virtual environments targeting to simulate the motion of a catheter/guide wire with complex 3D vascular models. Experimental results show that the 3D virtual environments are effective and promising.