Visualization of drilling operation on surface based models

Computer based surgical simulation has been one of the developing areas in virtual reality research for years. These simulation systems are used to educate and train surgeons to do surgical operations. This thesis is a part of the simulation platform VISPLAT (Virtual Planning and Training Simulator). It includes visualization of drilling operation on surface models by using haptics technology.Most of the existing surgical simulators use volume models. In this thesis, visualization of drilling (burring) operation is performed on surface models.The simulation is performed on triangulated surface models with triangulated burr type drills. Triangle-triangle collision detection and mesh refinement algorithms are developed for obtaining a cavity view while drilling. Drilling operation includes collision detection of triangles, refining the colliding triangles, and finally creating a cavity on the surface mesh.A framework has also been developed in order to integrate the haptic device with the visualization system. H3D toolkit is used for this purpose which provides high resolution 3D models in real-time which bring more realistic application behavior to the surgery simulation.