The applicants propose to develop a virtual reality-based simulator for interventional cardiology. The goal of this work is to simulate the """"""""look and feel"""""""" of diagnostic catheterization, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), and coronary stenting with enough accuracy to serve as a platform for the design and evaluation of cardiovascular devices. Emphasis will be placed on validation of the simulator as a teaching and certification instrument for physician training and accreditation. The simulator will be based on the da Vinci catheter insertion simulator for interventional radiology developed at the Centre for Information-enhanced Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The simulator will be configured using finite element modeling to provide accurate physical applications of devices such as catheters, guidewires, dilatation balloons and stents. Models of the heart and the treat vessels will be derived from the Visible Human Project and patient-specific data. The development of a high fidelity interventional cardiology simulator will lead to a reduction in health care costs by reducing medical device errors, improving physician performance by reducing the learning curves in which human patients are used, reduce training on patients and animals, and providing a mechanism for maintenance of physician competence.
