Virtual Reality Training In Interventional Radiology: The Johns Hopkins and Kent Ridge Digital Laboratory Experience

This article describes a personal computer-based system for simulation of image-guided cardiovascular interventional procedures for physician and technician training, education, patient-specific pretreatment planning, and therapeutic device design and evaluation. The system provides users with the ability to manipulate and interface interventional devices such as catheters, guide wires, stents, and coils within two-dimensional (2-D) and volume-rendered 3-D reconstructed vascular images in real time. Finite element modeling is used to predict and characterize the interaction of the instruments with component parts of the vascular system and other body tissues. Image display monitors provide fluoroscopic, road mapping, and volume-rendered 3-D presentations of the vasculature. System software libraries provide the opportunity to choose various commonly used catheter and guide wire shapes and sizes as well as various sizes of stents and occluding coils. For training purposes, the system can be incorporated into a lifelike augmented reality-based environment in which interventional procedures are performed. This system also provides a method to design and evaluate the potential performance and/or clinical application of medical devices for interventional applications.