The Haptics-Assisted Surgery Planning System (HASP)

Important results from the project

Intra-mandibular tumors and complex facial trauma require lengthy and difficult surgical procedures. Improved surgical accuracy can lead to better healing, function and aesthetics, reduced post-operative suffering and rehabilitation time, and reduced risk for follow-up surgery. Reduced surgery time leads to reduced morbidity, and reduced time to surgery is especially important for trauma patients. There is also a need to reduce the financial impact on the healthcare system by reducing surgery planning and manufacturing time and cost, and by reducing time in the operating room.

Expected long term effects

HASP, the Haptics-Assisted Surgery Planning system, allows a surgeon, after only minimal training, to develop in less than one hour a pre-operative, patient-specific plan for restoring the skeletal anatomy to patients with mandibular tumors that includes vessel modelling for fibula free-flaps. The result of the planning process includes 3D descriptions of patient-specific saw-guides and fixation plates so that these may be produced in-house, significantly shortening the time to surgery

Approach and implementation

The success of HASP lies in the user interface. While conventional surgery planning systems rely on two-dimensional interaction tools, such as a mouse and a keyboard, to perform intrinsically three-dimensional tasks, such as repositioning virtual bone fragments or implants, HASP offers a powerful combination of interaction techniques: stereo graphics, head-tracking, and haptics. HASP has been installed and tested at the Uppsala University Hospital and at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in NYC. It has been demonstrated at a number of conferences and has been uniformly well received.