BUILDING A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT FOR ENDOSCOPIC SINUS SURGERY SIMULATION

Advanced display technologies have made the virtual exploration of rel atively complex models feasible in many applications. Unfortunately, o nly a few human interfaces allow natural interaction with the environm ent Moreover, in surgical applications, such realistic interaction req uires real-time rendering of volumetric data-placing an overwhelming p erformance burden on the system. We report on our advances towards dev eloping a virtual reality system that provides intuitive interaction w ith complex volume data by employing real-time realistic volume render ing and convincing force feedback (haptic) sensations. We describe our methods for real-time volume rendering, model deformation, interactio n, and the haptic devices, and demonstrate the utilization of this sys tem in the real-world application of Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (ESS) si mulation. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.