Patient-Specific Vascular Modeling - Microsurgery: Advances, Simulations, and Applications - page 117

The pulsatile motion of vessel wall similar to the human was
reproduced by reproducing the pulsated blood circulation in
this simulator; consequently, the swing and the inducement of
the medical equipment according to the low were satisfactorily
reproduced. Consequently, the reproducibility of the surgical
procedure has dramatically improved compared with the cerebral
arterial model, in which reproduction is limited to local area, and, it
becomes possible to know the procedures that have to be taken care
of, such as the blood lowing out caused by forgetting to close a cork
provided on catheters and other medical equipment. It is conirmed
by interventionalists that the constructed simulator is very helpful
for the acquisition of technical skills required for endovascular
intervention. Meantime, the evaluation function of the stress applied
to the cerebral arterial model was conirmed and was valuable. The
stress can be directly observed and quantitatively analyzed (and
displayed) by computer analysis as a real-time information, and it
is conirmed to be very helpful in evaluating surgical procedures
and in improving surgical methodologies. With respect to this stress
evaluation, a lot of interventionalists gave us their opinion that points
out the necessity of this function and the needs of materializing more
diversiied evaluation environment using this technology. On the
other hand, it was also conirmed that the whole body reproduction
is not essential for diagnosis purpose, including preliminary
surgical simulation and surgical planning. It was conirmed
that the application of patient-speciic local vessel model to the
corresponding part of overall simulator is appropriate, considering
the time cost and labor cost needed for vascular modeling. Moreover,
it was conirmed that the local cerebral arterial model is enough for
making diagnosis for the skilled interventionalist. The constructed
comprehensive surgical simulator was exhibited in the international
exposition 2005 Ai-Chikyu-Haku, held in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. The
simulator was evaluated by more than 150,000 visitors during this
period (about 5000 of them experienced this simulator). During that
time, it attracted attention from doctors and medical manufacturers
as a new simulation tool. Due to its utility, the simulator received
then a positive evaluation from the visitors (Fig. 3.47).