Microsurgery is a very specialized form of surgery done using microscopes. An example of microsurgery is removing a cataract from an animal’s eye. Training for this procedure and microsurgery in general requires immense skill and is highly costly to practice over and over again. The cost is due to the necessary test subjects, like cadavers/preserved organs, and equipment. A different way to perform microsurgery training is needed to reduce cost and provide a more flexible and reliable system. For our project we will be researching and developing the basis for a system to improve microsurgical training using virtual reality. Virtual reality is still a relatively new market and many tools are currently not in place to do fine detailed work. However, VR is advancing daily and having a system in place that can be expanded upon when new technologies are released will provide for a fast moving prototype. We will be using an HTC Vive Virtual Reality Headset in order create an interactive virtual environment to aid in training microsurgical procedures.
Client - Dr. Gil Ben-Shlomo | Advisor - Dr. Nir Keren | Contact - med-vr@iastate.edu
