Evaluation of virtual endoscopy for application in clinical neurosciences

An integrated environment for plastic surgery support: building virtual patients, simulating interventions, and supporting intraoperative decisions

In the last decade a number of environments for Computer Supported Plastic Surgery have been presented. Nevertheless, an overall approach for training and intraoperative support is still missing or has not been widely exploited yet. We developed a fully integrated system which allows surgical simulation, planning, and support for computer-guided plastic surgery procedures starting from image acquisition to final intraoperative assistance. The system also provides the user with a radiological workstation able to analyse patient medical images and case studies, with advanced bidimensional and three dimensional image processing functionalities. We intend to demonstrate that such a platform can be built at an affordable cost. The radiological workstation is capable of supporting radiologists and surgeons in real patient case studies and the simulation workstation may be adopted by plastic surgeons in teaching and training of complex surgical planning. Moreover, results of simulation can be used in the operating room with a relatively high benefit in terms of improved accuracy, reduction of surgical risks, and decrease in training costs.

Depth-map-based scene analysis for active navigation in virtual angioscopy

This paper presents a new approach dealing with virtual exploratory navigation inside vascular structures. It is based on the notion of active vision in which only visual perception drives the motion of the virtual angioscope. The proposed fly-through approach does not require a premodeling of the volume dataset or an interactive control of the virtual sensor during the fly-through. Active navigation combines the on-line computation of the scene view and its analysis, to automatically define the three-dimensional sensor path. The navigation environment and the camera-like model are first sketched. The basic stages of the active navigation framework are then described: the virtual image computation (based on ray casting), the scene analysis process (using depth map), the navigation strategy, and the virtual path estimation. Experimental results obtained from phantom model and patient computed tomography data are finally reported.