Case Western Reserve University will develop, deploy and evaluate networked virtual environments for surgical simulation in the areas of general endoscopic, percutaneous, and image guided procedures. Surgical simulators are becoming increasingly important elements in surgical training as valid and objective measures of surgical competence. The technical outcome for this project is a networked surgical virtual environment that presents a high degree of fidelity and realism, even over a network that is subject to varying degrees of quality of service. The virtual environment will run on a cluster computer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Medical training, continuing education, and advanced training programs will be able to access the simulation from Jackson Memorial Hospital and the other hospitals in the Jackson Health System through broadband network connectivity.
The solution of this engineering problem will have great utility for the transmission of educational and/or health related content across IP networks. More important, the lessons learned in attempting to solve this important engineering problem will have value for future attempts to solve and/ or refine the solution to this problem.
Case Western Reserve University will partner with Jackson Memorial Hospital of Miami, Florida, one of the largest, most comprehensive medical centers in the nation.
