A virtual environment and model of the eye for surgical simulation

An anatomically detailed 3-D computer graphic model of the eye and surrounding face within a virtual environment has been implemented for use in a surgical simulator. The simulator forms part of a teleoperated micro-surgical robotic system being developed for eye surgery. The model has been designed to both visually and mechanically simulate features of the human eye by coupling computer graphic realism with finite element analysis. The paper gives an overview of the system with emphasis on the graphical modelling techniques and a computationally efficient framework for representing anatomical details of the eye and for finite element analysis of the mechanical properties. Examples of realistic images coupled to large deformation finite element model of the cornea are presented. These images can be rendered sufficiently fast for the virtual reality application.