Shamyl B Mansoor, Zohaib Amjad, Asif Zafar, Dr
National University of Sciences and Technology, Holy Family Hospital
Introduction
Minimal Invasive Surgery, (MIS), is an advanced method performed by using instruments inserted through small keyhole incisions. In countries like Pakistan who have not completely adopted MIS, surgeons are trained for open surgery. In open surgery surgeons are used to handling things directly with their hands and instruments that are not confined to small spaces. Training of surgeons becomes a challenging prospect due to this paradigm shift. MIS requires the use of special skills by a surgeon which include skills like hand eye coordination, working in confined spaces and working with lack of depth perception. Dexterity loss takes place which should be compensated by repetitive training. This repetitive training is usually possible by using Simulators.
Objective
Commercial simulators like LapSim, LapMentor and ProMIS are available that are used for training of MIS techniques. These simulators are very costly and generally unaffordable for countries like Pakistan which have very limited budgets for public health and education. In this project our objective is to develop a cost effective local solution for Pakistan by using open source simulation engines.
Methodology
Generally a simulator consists of a simulation engine, a collision pipeline, a user interface and visualization methods. We have used SOFA (Simulation Open Framework Architecture) an open source simulation engine to develop our simulator system. This has allowed us to develop rapidly rather than developing everything from scratch. In order to train the surgeons we have divided the simulator into three kinds of trainings. Basic, General Surgery and Gynecology training modules.
Conclusion
The system currently developed has features like instrument navigation, handling, camera navigation, tying knots and performing basic training exercises. In the next 12 months we will be implementing more complex training exercises.
Session: Podium Presentation
Program Number: ET008