Surgical Simulator

Surgical simulators are virtual environments designed to train surgeons, assess surgical skills, and develop robotic surgical systems. Current research focuses on enhancing simulator realism through techniques like injecting learned robotic errors into simulations, using data-driven methods to reconstruct 3D surgical scenes from videos (e.g., employing 3D Gaussians and physics-based modeling), and developing automated skill assessment tools leveraging machine learning models (e.g., convolutional neural networks and multilayer perceptrons) to analyze instrument tracking data. These advancements improve surgical training, enable objective skill evaluation, and accelerate the development of more sophisticated robotic surgical systems, ultimately contributing to improved patient outcomes and surgical efficiency.