An 3D interactive virtual reality software toolkit for minimally invasive vascular surgery

Recently, much more attention has been paid to the development of minimally invasive vascular surgery. Simulating behaviors of a catheter/guide wire in a realistic 3D vascular model for minimally invasive vascular surgery is a challenging subject. One of the main problems for an 3D computer-based virtual reality simulator is how to design a software toolkit primarily targeted to medical simulation. In this paper, we describe an 3D interactive virtual reality software toolkit and present an example of application to a virtual minimally invasive vascular surgery procedure. Finally, experimental results are given to show that the 3D interactive virtual reality software toolkit is effective and promising.