Hello Orion,
Best of luck with this. I myself am an orthopaedic surgeon, and have played around with similar projects to simulate total joint arthroplasty. To this end, I've tried Darkbasic, Blitz, and even Conitec's package, but have found none to be really ideal for the necessary mechanics.
Skeletal anatomy and hardware are not difficult to model (in fact, there are many extant files available), but the real devil of a time has been in accurate modeling of 3D anatomic structures such as vessels, nerves, fascial planes, etc., and then incorporation of a modicum of real-world behavior. I have occasionally tried modeling them as splines, or as .3DS objects, but simulating deformation (or worse, transection!) is quite challenging, especially when you consider that realistic behavior requires extremely complex physics (e.g., a perforator artery is deformed by pressure on the overlying gluteal muscles, which themselves are influenced by numerous vascular and fascial tethers... or the leash of vessels around the femoral neck are displaced and tensioned by what you are doing to the capsule... or basic muscle tissue contracts with manipulation... you begin to see the extreme difficulty in modeling viscoelastic and physiologic behavior of adjoining anatomic structures).
In the end, I have settled for creating 3D instructional programs for resident/student teaching, which lacked the type of interactivity that I desired, but were not nearly as difficult to produce (especially with the limited time we have for these endeavors!). If you are able to realistically model the behavior of STSG's, free flaps, rotational flaps, etc. it would be an enormously impressive feat. A number of orthopaedic implant manufacturers have given this at least passing interest and instead focused on easily producible multimedia slide shows when the difficulty of producing such a piece of software becomes evident.
I wish you the best of luck, and if you find that you are able to make this work, please drop a line here so that I may take a look at your project. Our university and residency program would have an interest in such software.
Best of luck with this. I myself am an orthopaedic surgeon, and have played around with similar projects to simulate total joint arthroplasty. To this end, I've tried Darkbasic, Blitz, and even Conitec's package, but have found none to be really ideal for the necessary mechanics.
Skeletal anatomy and hardware are not difficult to model (in fact, there are many extant files available), but the real devil of a time has been in accurate modeling of 3D anatomic structures such as vessels, nerves, fascial planes, etc., and then incorporation of a modicum of real-world behavior. I have occasionally tried modeling them as splines, or as .3DS objects, but simulating deformation (or worse, transection!) is quite challenging, especially when you consider that realistic behavior requires extremely complex physics (e.g., a perforator artery is deformed by pressure on the overlying gluteal muscles, which themselves are influenced by numerous vascular and fascial tethers... or the leash of vessels around the femoral neck are displaced and tensioned by what you are doing to the capsule... or basic muscle tissue contracts with manipulation... you begin to see the extreme difficulty in modeling viscoelastic and physiologic behavior of adjoining anatomic structures).
In the end, I have settled for creating 3D instructional programs for resident/student teaching, which lacked the type of interactivity that I desired, but were not nearly as difficult to produce (especially with the limited time we have for these endeavors!). If you are able to realistically model the behavior of STSG's, free flaps, rotational flaps, etc. it would be an enormously impressive feat. A number of orthopaedic implant manufacturers have given this at least passing interest and instead focused on easily producible multimedia slide shows when the difficulty of producing such a piece of software becomes evident.
I wish you the best of luck, and if you find that you are able to make this work, please drop a line here so that I may take a look at your project. Our university and residency program would have an interest in such software.