A VR-based training system for vascular interventional surgery

Abstract

The Vascular Interventional Surgery(VIS) is a specialized surgical technique that permits vascular interventions through very small incisions. This minimizes the patients' trauma and permits a faster recovery compared to traditional surgery. However, the significant disadvantage of this surgery technique is its complexity; therefore, it requires extensive training before surgery. In this paper, we present a training system based on virtual reality technology for unskilled doctors with extremely similar environment in real vascular interventional surgery. This application allows generating realistic geometrical model of catheter and blood vessels, and enables surgeons to touch, feel and manipulate virtual catheter inside vascular model through the same surgical operation mode used in actual VIS. Finally, the experimental results show that the error rate is in an acceptable range and the system can be used for surgery training.