A laparoscopic surgery simulator for training

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has many advantages over traditional procedures and thus training with MIS tools via computer simulations has received much attention. These tools are generally grouped into two major categories: Physical training-boxes, and Computer vision/Virtual Reality (VR) tools. In this thesis, a computer vision based simulator is proposed which uses a training box for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) that is composed of a single camera and a planar mirror. The average 3D positional error of laparoscopic/endoscopic tools was 0.96 mm (± 0.44 mm) at 1280x960 resolution, and 1.18 mm (± 0.52 mm) at 320x240. So, the error is minimally effected as the resolution decreases. The proposed method has some advantages over relevant literature methods, such as an improved accuracy (approximately 60%) even at low resolutions with a low processing time (approximately 30%). Therefore, the proposed method appears as a promising and low cost (approximately 70%) alternative for computer vision based MIS training tools.