SPINALTAP: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR REAL-TIME VERTEBRAE DRILLING SIMULATION

Abstract

This report describes the implementation of the SpinalTap virtual spinal surgery simulation system. The goal of the system is to simulate drilling into vertebrae. Two methods for reconstructing a vertebrae from CT scan data are presented. Several models of an L3 vertebrae are reconstructed with varying results. An architecture for real-time high speed decimation of point volumes is explained and implemented. Simulations performed with test data show collision testing rates of over 400Hz on current PC hardware.