Traditional medical training often faces limitations due to the shortage of cadaver resources and ethical concerns over animal testing. To address this, the Digital Health and Medical Robotics Lab at National Cheng Kung University has successfully developed a multifunctional, highly realistic prosthetic system. By integrating 2D medical images and utilizing AI to automatically generate 3D organ models, this system enables intelligent and customized production of bionic prostheses. It can accurately simulate the characteristics of human organs and tissues and recreate various minimally invasive surgical scenarios, such as thermal ablation, cutting, and suturing, providing medical students and physicians with a highly realistic environment for minimally invasive surgical training.
Driven by Three Core Technologies! Creating a Realistic Minimally Invasive Surgery Training Platform
This system incorporates three key technologies:
Biomimetic Dual-Grid Artificial Material (BDAM)
BDAM is a highly biomimetic artificial material that replicates the denaturation effect of proteins when heated, similar to real tissue. It simulates various responses of human tissue during surgery, such as cutting, suturing, and thermal ablation, while retaining clear ultrasound imaging characteristics. This allows trainees to gain an intuitive understanding of different tissue types and improves their minimally invasive surgical skills.
Interactive Simulated Human Circulation System (IMHCS)
IMHCS can dynamically adjust physiological parameters such as heart rate and blood pressure to simulate the patient’s breathing and blood circulation during surgery. This feature not only makes the training environment more realistic but also enhances the challenges of surgical training.
Embedded Soft Intelligent Sensor (ESIS)
ESIS is a flexible electronic sensor that can be implanted in the bionic prosthesis to monitor tissue temperature in the thermal ablation area in real-time. During surgical training, ESIS provides real-time alerts, helping trainees master thermal ablation techniques and avoid thermal damage to critical areas like nerves and blood vessels.
These three integrated technologies create a highly realistic and interactive training platform for minimally invasive surgery. In addition to preoperative planning for surgeons, the platform enables users to engage in repetitive and extensive surgical practice, helping them build experience and accelerate the learning curve for new techniques.
Professor Yi-Chun Du of NCKU: Creating an International-Standard Minimally Invasive Surgery Training Platform
Professor Yi-Chun Du commented, “We are committed to developing a series of medical training platforms to accelerate the learning curve for clinical staff and contribute to the global healthcare industry.” Professor Du highlighted that the BDAM biomimetic material used in this system contains no animal tissue or plant-based proteins, making it highly versatile. The development of this system has gained support from numerous healthcare institutions and medical device companies, both domestically and internationally, aligning with global 3R policies and the trend toward AI-powered smart healthcare.
As medical technology advances rapidly, the demand for training healthcare professionals has increased significantly, while the 3R policies have gradually reduced animal testing. This simulated minimally invasive surgery training system offers medical training without the need for animal sacrifice, accelerating the cultivation of the next generation of healthcare talent and enhancing global health and well-being. Looking ahead, the team plans to further refine the system, expanding its applications to more surgical fields to meet diverse clinical needs and actively partnering with international collaborators to promote the global adoption of this technology.
Resource (mandarin): 仿生假體高度還原情境 打造微創手術訓練平台
