Australian surgeons guide Swedes over the Net
Australian surgeons guide Swedes over the Net
Australian surgeons guided a trainee surgeon in Stockholm, Sweden in a demonstration of Haptics imaging virtual reality technology.
The demonstration took place at Parliament House, Canberra. The Australian surgeon simulated a cholecystectomy operation (an operation to remove a gall bladder) with a student at the offices of Reachin Technologies in Sweden. CSIRO developed a function within the technology to ensure that only the vital information gets high priority down the broadband connection.
"Our software is able to handle the problems of network latency and jitter," said Chris Gunn of the CSIRO Mathematical and Information Services department. Explaining the experiment Mr Gunn said, "The trainee could feel the instructor guiding his hand around the scene - even though they were on opposite sides of the world. The could co-operatively feel, stretch and manipulate a simulated gall-bladder and guide each others hands as though they were in the same operating theatre."
The Haptic workbench and software provides a virtual bench, both in size and environment. Users can see, feel and manipulate three dimensional objects using connected tools which are touch sensitive.
Reachin technologies is a partner with CSIRO in the project, along with CeNTIE and Nortel Networks. Reachin provided part of the application programming layer. Haptics and the collaborative virtual environment is being developed by CSIRO and partners as part of the tele-heath initiative, which is part of the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Econonmy (CeNTIE).
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