Evaluation of Real-Time Visio-Haptic Deformable Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator

A real-time Visio-haptic Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator for training veterinary students was developed. The simulator was meant for training medical veterinary students before they could actually perform diagnosis of various parts of the reproductive tract on live animals. In this simulator the teacher guides the student in applying forces using force feedback device, when palpating different parts of the reproductive system. The teacher can better guide the student if he can see visually forces applied by the student. The implementation proposed is motivated by an existing simulator of a reproductive system used for diagnosing different internal parts which lacks visual deformation features; hence, realism is reduced. In this work, two simulators were used, one with visual deformation and other without visual deformation. The results gather from various experiments by trainees shown that a simulator with visual deformation can better and quickly train the trainees as the trainer has a continuous control over the actions of the trainee. In this study only Ovary was considered during experiments and the trainees were allowed to palpate ovary and their applied forces were recorded. Further work is in progress to model the entire reproductive tract and to find efficient algorithms for interactive deformation.