Virtual reality on mobile phones to reduce anxiety in outpatient surgery.

When undergo ambulatory surgical operations, the majority of patients experience high level of anxiety. Different experimental studies have shown that distraction techniques are effective in reducing pain and related anxiety. Since Virtual reality (VR) has been demonstrated a good distraction technique, it has been repeatedly used in hospital contexts for reducing pain in burned patients, but it has never been used during surgical operations. With the present randomized controlled study we intended to verify the effectiveness of VR in reducing anxiety in patients undergoing ambulatory operations under local or regional anaesthesia. In particular, we measured the degree to which anxiety associated with surgical intervention was reduced by distracting patients with immersive VR provided through a cell phone connected to an HMD compared to a no-distraction control condition. A significant reduction of anxiety was obtained after 45 minutes of operation in the VR group, but not in the control group and, after 90 minutes, the reduction was larger in the experimental group than in other one. In conclusion, this study presents an innovative promising technique to reduce anxiety during surgical interventions, even if more studies are necessary to investigate its effectiveness in other kinds of operations and in larger numbers of patients.

Cyborg mini-trainer.

We present the smallest surgical trainer with a total weight of 400 gr, built in aluminum of 25 cm large and 24 cm wide, and 23 cm high. It's a system integrated by a small and open module, a lamp and a microcamera connected to a Head Mounted display. It holds two endoscopic instruments, and items to make knots or sutures and enhance visual-motor coordination. The vision we got is by a small microcamera displayed to a Head Mounted Display HMD. This surgical trainer is the smallest in the worldwide, easy to install, and easy to carry.

A mesh-free mechanical model of the upper gastrointestinal system.

Realistic behavior in Computer Simulation of biological system (e.g. humans organs) is essential to 3D modeling in medicine. In order to improve realistic responses of 3D organ model it is essential to use mechanical models that can deal with multiple objects internal and external interactions in a reasonable time frame. We will apply the Smooth Particles Hydrodynamics (SPH) to model the esophagus and the stomach, thus constructing a physical background for interaction. We used a multilayer model of particles related to a single triangle mesh. Each particle layers represent distinct biological tissues of the esophagus and the stomach.

Modeling interactions with a computer representation of the upper gastrointestinal system.

Our goal is to simulate interactions with a computer model of the esophagus and the stomach, built from the Visible Human database, and reported in previous works. The optical distortion of the endoscope was simulated during navigation allowing the user a quantitative assessment of distortion when measures an injury. Another improvement to our model is the inclusion of abnormal anatomy, from two types, the first one is related to the color features of the disease and the second is a direct modification in the triangle structure of the mesh, with the goal to simulate blisters and injures in the model. The esophagus in its natural state presents radial collapsing, which was simulated using finite element methods. To this collapsed state we superposed the interaction of the triangle mesh with a model of the air pressure against the walls. The collapsed state allows to train the user in the insertion of the endoscope and to assess the effects of friction between the walls and the instrument.