Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 11- NextMed: Health Horizon

Papers from the 11th Medicine Meets Virtual Reality (MMVR) meeting (the date and location are not noted) describe potential and emerging modeling and simulation techniques that would benefit biotechnology and genomics, novel materials that would revolutionize medical imaging and surgical simulation, and nanotech discoveries that would transform robotics and networked health care. Specific topics examined include a haptic model of a bone-cutting burr, online training evaluation in VR simulators using Gaussian mixture models, and modeling human burn injuries in a three-dimensional virtual environment. Other subjects include 3D jaw modeling and animation, development of an interactive teaching system based on motion synchrony between physical and virtual models, and trauma team training in a distributed virtual emergency room. There is no subject index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Proceedings of the 11th annual. Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference provides current research on many data-centered applications for clinical care and medical education. It is a reference source for IT researchers working in a biomedical context, medical educators, physicians interested in emerging clinical tools, and medical device developers. A major focus is on surgical simulation and supporting technologies: haptics, tissue modeling, and virtual environments. Assessment and validation studies are represented, as well as papers on simulator design and didactics. Another core area is information-guided therapy, from diagnosis through surgery. Discussion of imaging techniques is complemented by papers on visualization, data fusion, and augmented reality. Advances in robotic surgery are also presented.