Pioneering project �could be biggest breakthrough since keyhole surgery�By Helen McArdle
TRAINEE surgeons will soon be able to operate on a digital simulation of the human body, thanks to a pioneering project based in Glasgow hailed as one of the most important medical breakthroughs since keyhole surgery.
Since November Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow have been collaborating on a multimillion pound initiative to create an interactive, digital simulation of the human body which they hope will eventually be used to train junior doctors in complex surgical procedures and transform how students learn anatomy.
Click play to watch our video on pioneering virtual reality surgery
Virtual reality previews of procedures and hazard-alert "tracking" devices will make surgery quicker and safer.
Part of the nationwide Scottish Medical Visualization Network and currently based at the art school's digital design studio, the project is now poised to create a "definitive 3D digital human" based on data from a donated male and female cadaver.
The scale of the 3D model - big enough for groups of students to walk around wearing 3D glasses and sensory gloves which will allow them to "touch" everything from internal organs and blood vessels to bones and lymph nodes - is prompting a change in location.
By July the digital design studio will have moved from its current home at Charles Rennie Mackintosh's iconic House for an Art Lover to Pacific Quay.
"It will be one of the top spaces in the world for three-dimensional imaging technology," says Professor Paul Anderson, director of the DDS. "It will allow us to experience the human body to a scale that's never been seen before."
Sophisticated laser scanning technology will be used to create accurate replicas of the real-life bodies. They hope to invite trainee medics to trial the equipment from the end of this year.
Advancing this kind of technology could help alleviate two looming problems: a decline in bodies donated for medical science for students to dissect, and the pressures on training time posed by the European Time Directive which will see junior doctors' hours limited to 48 per week from August 1.
"This project is about making sure that by the time trainees are at the point where they have to use a particular technique or procedure, they will actually have the opportunity to try it out virtually, so that by the time they get from the simulated into the real environment they've actually done it quite a few times," says Dr Jim Miller, chief executive of the RCPSG. "Whether or not that dramatically reduces the training time is yet to be seen."
Long-term, it's hoped the "definitive" human could be a model which could be overlaid with individual data, allowing surgeons to carry out practice runs on a virtual patient before the real operation. The technology comes as a Danish study, reported on Friday in the British Medical Journal, found that the success rate of surgeries performed by students trained in simulators was four to 10 times better than a control group.
See sundayherald.com for videocast of breakthrough technology
