Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

The incidence of orthopaedic procedures of the upper limb is increasing dramatically in our aging population. Although someof the currently employed joint replacement procedures are successful, most surgeons tend to find them technicallychallenging. Recently, there has been growing interest in the use of simulators to train surgical staff, in a manner that issimilar to the approaches taken for airplane pilots. As such, it is logical to postulate that the long term outcome of the jointreplacement procedures will be significantly enhanced through the implementation of virtual simulators into the regulartraining curriculum.To address this, the primary goal of the proposed research is to develop a virtual simulator to be used as a reliable trainingtool by the surgical staff involved with shoulder joint replacement procedures at Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistryas well as Hand and Upper Limb Centre. To enhance the quality and effectiveness of the developed simulator, the systemwill be equipped with augmented haptic feedback, aiming to provide surgeons with a realistic feel on the bone removaloperation associated with glenoid surfacing procedure.The accuracy and feasibility of the developed system will be ensured through an extensive experimental testing andvalidation phases. Furthermore, surgeons will use the simulator to hone their skills and perform pre-operative planningbefore operating on patients. Over the longer term, it is envisioned that the developed virtual simulator will providesubstantial reductions in procedure time and revision rates, which will ultimately translate into significant cost savings toCanadians.