ABSTRACT
For many years various charities have been sending doctors to developing countries
to perform cleft lip and palate surgery. In the course of these missionary trips,
visiting doctors can operate on only a limited number of patients. It has become clear
that empowering the local surgeon to solve the problem is the solution. The SmileTrain
commissioned our laboratory to created a series of CD roms that would instruct surgeons,
using a combination of three-dimensional animation and live surgical footage. During
the course of production for these CDs, we programmed custom plug-ins into commercial
animation software (Maya® Alias) that would allow us to perform surgery techniques on a digital model of a
unilateral and bilateral patient. The next phase of the project was to create a surgical
simulator. From the animation project, we had developed a work flow for virtual surgery
simulation. Using many of the concepts from the animation project, we were able to
program a real-time virtual surgical simulator using C++. The deformer-based surgery
simulator is a stand-alone application that can allow a doctor to practice, record,
and review a surgery in a safe digital environment.
KEYWORDS
Surgery simulation - 3D animation - surgical simulator - virtual surgery
