Developing clinically relevant aspects of the nuss procedure surgical simulator.

Surgical simulators can avail minimizing the risk of surgery and help achieving a better outcome. This is also the case for the Nuss procedure, a minimally invasive surgery for correcting pectus excavatum (PE) - a congenital chest wall deformity. A simulator can be of great benefit if it provides realistic behavior and representation of the actual surgery. In this paper, we address various clinical aspects of the procedure for a training simulation, reproducing a virtual model of the patient's thoracic cavity and internal organs with realistic textures, as well as physical behaviors. In addition, a high fidelity haptic force feedback system is constructed to provide the surgeon with a close-to-real sensation while interacting with the virtual model.