Web based camera navigation for virtual pancreatic cancer surgery: Whipple surgery simulator (VPanSS)

Abstract

This study presents an preliminary design and development of a web based real-time virtual laparoscopy simulation for pancreticoduodentomy (Whipple Procedure). In this early stage, we primarily focused on virtual camera navigation to improve hand-eye coordination of a surgeon. Pancreticoduodentomy, pancreatic surgery, is one of most challenging laparoscopic surgeries. We examined whole Whipple procedure to identify its major tasks for the design of a virtual training simulator. Based on the tasks analysis, we found that one of the major challenges in Whipple surgery is accessing to the pancreas. Therefore, identification of the tumorous regions and tumor spread around pancreas become complicated. Surgeons need to carefully navigate laparoscopic camera to the pancreas and nearby tissues and locate the regions affected by the tumor. However, cameras navigation in laparoscopy is intricate due to different abdominal entry locations of camera and surgical tools. Therefore, we developed a real-time, web based, surgical simulation training platform for camera navigation task for Whipple procedure. The goal is to provide accessible, portable, ubiquitous, hardware independent training simulation platform unlike any other surgical simulators. In VPanSS, we developed and integrated a novel contact detection algorithm to continuously determine the camera-organ/tissue contacts during the laparoscopic camera navigation. We tested real-time performance of VPanSS on various platforms to understand its effectiveness and applicability.