Temporal bone surgical simulation employing a multicore architecture

This paper presents a novel haptic temporal bone surgery simulator. Temporal bone surgery is challenging as anatomic structures are complex and encased within bone. The new simulator is designed to train surgical residents permitting virtual practice of complex patient specific procedures before actual surgery is performed. The simulation employs voxels for collision detection and bone removal. It is designed to run on multicore computers that allow it to render changes in the temporal bone using Marching Cubes and Laplacian HC smoothing, in real time. This approach allows the use of consumer level hardware to display the simulation in stereo 3D, and serves as a vehicle for several new training tools, now incorporated into the simulation. Future plans include trials of validity, efficacy and cost effective integration into training and surgical rehearsal.