Workshop Goals

  1. Learn details of existing Open Source frameworks and engines for surgical simulators
  2. Learn to build with selected engines: SPRING, others . . .
  3. Create one or more surgical simulators
  4. Become a founding member of the Open Source Surgical Simulation Community

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Rapid Prototyping of Surgical Simulators using Open Source Simulation Software

August 28-30th at Stanfordspring

This workshop on Developing Surgical Simulators –not an ordinary workshop, but a unique forum in which we learned and shared with experienced modelers and surgeons, left with new product ideas, and . . . plan to continue as an ongoing  interactive community!  

This workshop is sponsored by TATRC and DARPA and the Center for Immersive & Simulation-based Learning (CISL).

DARPATATRC

Who attended this workshop?

Teams: a surgeon and software developer, both committed to surgical education technologies.

Most institutions sent a team of a laparoscopic surgeon (content experts) and  one or two skilled software programmers (technical experts) to the workshop.  These teams, committed to implementing surgical education technologies, will continue to be the essential drivers for success of this Open Source surgical simulation community.Spring

During the first two days of the workshop, the content experts created provocative surgical scenarios, while the technical experts of each team learned software framework and tools for simulation. 

Surgeons collaborated with developers to implement these ideas, guiding and critiquing designs, and evaluating early results and achievements of the workshop.  The technical experts continue to learn, implement, and refine the simulation scenarios for an additional day at Stanford, before returning to home institutions for further collaboration with the content experts.

A commitment to collaborative brainstorming, constructive critique, and continued communication and sharing of simulation development was shown by all participants.


Workshop Leaders

The teams will be lead by two experts: W. LeRoy Heinrichs, Professor (Emeritus, Active and Past Chair) of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Stanford School of Medicine, who is renowned in the field of surgical simulation and Craig Cornelius, a 3D programmer and co-developer of the surgical simulation software platform, SPRING, that will be introduced at the workshop.

Kevin Montgomery, Technical Director of the National Biocomputation Center at the Stanford School of Medicine, originated the SPRING platform and his lab continues to develop SPRING.