What is Haptics?

Haptic technology refers to a technology that enables real time force feedback interfaces with the user via the sense of touch. This technology has numerous applications in many fields such as games, virtual reality and medical simulation.

The use of haptics in medical simulation has proven especially useful in training of surgical procedures. With further development, it may become possible for expert surgeons to work from a central workstation and need not be physcially present at the operating theatre for minimally invasive procedures or remote surgery that use teleoperators. it has been proven that training on medical simulators improves the performance of surgeons in open surgery which would be beneficial to the patient.       

The force feedback in our case is calculated using an algorithm used in a Temporal Bone Surgery simulator. The drill is represented by a sphere interacting with the sample model of, in our case, the jaw bone. The model is derived from 277 Computer Tomography X-Ray images, each containing 260,000 points with absorption values. Every point is represented here by a small sphere used in the force feedback algorithm.