The practice of plastic surgery is built on a dual foundation of science and art. In planning reconstructive procedures for either trauma-induced or congenital deformities, the surgeon needs to consider aesthetics, anatomical function and post-operative health as deciding factors. The most important tool at the disposal of a plastic surgeon is the use of topology change as a medical remedy; in fact, most nontrivial repairs are designed as elaborate sequences of cutting, suturing, tissue rotation and transposition. Mastery of this intricate choreography of surgical manipulations is often the most distinguishing feature between an accomplished surgeon and a surgical resident with limited experience. Any opportunities that a surgeon in-training can leverage to develop this cognitive skill away from the operating room have great value in reducing the incidence of errors, minimizing post-operative complications and improving the quality-of-life for patients. Today, the computational capacity of modern multiprocessor systems suggests the strong possibility of computer simulation aiding in this training exercise. In addition, the vested interest on behalf of the visual computing community on functional modeling and simulation of virtual components of our physical world provides a wealth of numerical and algorithmic techniques that can be leveraged towards this goal. However, especially for plastic surgery, a number of challenges remain before cognitive training of plastic surgeons would become as computerized as pilot training on virtual flight simulators: the contributing communities of mathematics, computer engineering and clinical science need to develop a mechanism of intimate collaboration and communication, and the fruit of such collaborative development must become accessible to a broad base of clinicians as opposed to instances of segregated research groups with access to exotic computing resources. This interdisciplinary project seeks to generate an extensible, easy-to-deploy testbed of virtual plastic surgery simulation, tailored to facilitate intimate collaboration between computer scientists and clinical practitioners and provide a foundation for training plastic surgeons in delicate cognitive skills. The activities in this project combine the benefits of specialized, cost-effective parallel computing platforms with the ease of use of lightweight front-end clients, like tablets and mobile platforms, that can be deployed in private practices or training facilities of teaching hospitals.
The main objectives of this project are: (i) Defining and constructing a pipeline of algorithmic techniques and system components through which the capability of simulating the mechanics of deformable biological tissues at high resolution will be delivered as a network service to lightweight client platforms, (ii) Refining the analytic governing laws of nonlinear tissue, and leveraging them in a virtual computer-based simulation to assess, in a non-invasive manner, the viability of surgical designs and provide preliminary predictions for the outcome of procedures, (iii) Validate modeling assumptions, and improve the understanding of practical algorithmic needs by performing trial deployments of cognitive trainers for craniofacial repairs on actual users groups of surgical residents and seasoned experts, (iv) Provide a blueprint for delivery of computational dynamics as a cloud service for continuum mechanics applications, by investigating the role of network latency and bandwidth limitations and developing algorithmic remedies for balancing the needs of the software solution to facilitate remote delivery. The projected products of this activity will provide additional benefits to the curriculum of teaching health-oriented institutions, by providing easy and inexpensive access to virtual simulators for students in their early phases of study, without mandating exclusive use or local deployment of specialized parallel computing resources.
