SmartSIM - a virtual reality simulator for laparoscopy training using a generic physics engine.

Virtual reality (VR) training simulators have started playing a vital role in enhancing surgical skills, such as hand-eye coordination in laparoscopy, and practicing surgical scenarios that cannot be easily created using physical models. We describe a new VR simulator for basic training in laparoscopy, i.e. SmartSIM, which has been developed using a generic open-source physics engine called the simulation open framework architecture (SOFA). This paper describes the systems perspective of SmartSIM including design details of both hardware and software components, while highlighting the critical design decisions. Some of the distinguishing features of SmartSIM include: (i) an easy-to-fabricate custom-built hardware interface; (ii) use of a generic physics engine to facilitate wider accessibility of our work and flexibility in terms of using various graphical modelling algorithms and their implementations; and (iii) an intelligent and smart evaluation mechanism that facilitates unsupervised and independent learning.