INTRODUCTION Trajectories of surgical instruments in laparoscopic surgery contain rich information about surgeons' performance. In a simulation environment, instrument trajectories can be taken by motion sensors attached to the instruments. This method is not accepted by surgeons working in the operating room due to safety concerns. In this study, a novel approach of acquiring instrument trajec...

Modeling cuts, bleeding and the insertion of surgical instruments are essential in surgical simulation. Both visual and haptic cues are important. Current methods to simulate cuts change the topology of the model, invalidating pre-processing schemes or increasing the model's complexity. Bleeding is frequently modeled by particle systems or computational fluid dynamics. Both can be computational...

OBJECTIVE To have a new macroscopic classification of otosclerosis based on appearance variations of the stapes footplate due to the disease and to determine if the color variations are correlated to a minor or major incidence of footplate complications. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective study. MATERIALS AND METHODS From January 2006 to December 2006, 106 patients affected by otosclerosis underwen...