Realistic anatomical texture for laparoscopic surgery simulation.

Visual realism in laparoscopic surgery simulation is very desirable. Previously, much work has been done to extract the organs and textures from the visible human data (VHD) using various rendering techniques. We present here a technique to extract the true texture from visible human data for the laparoscopic herniorrhaphy simulation. A VHD slice provides texture only in the direction in which it was visualized whereas the surgeons visualize the facet of an organ during a laparoscopic surgery. Our paper describes an approach for the extraction and mapping facet texture from the VHD.