Key techniques of haptic related computation in virtual liver surgery

With or without a realistic haptic effect is the key difference between virtual surgery and the traditional training methods. On the real-time operation stage, users contact with the virtual scene and implement the operation by manipulating the haptic interaction device. Obviously, haptic related computation is the most important part for a virtual surgery system. This paper studied the haptic related computation of the virtual liver surgery, including the mechanism of haptic computation in liver virtual surgery, liver cutting area delineation and liver parenchyma splitting simulation. We developed two novel methods to simulate the delineation and splitting on the virtual liver surface. Results show our techniques can not only provide a realistic effect in our virtual surgery system, but also can be used in other simulation and geometry fields.