title: Virtual university applied to telesurgery: from teleeducation to telemanipulation.
abstract: PROBLEM/BACKGROUND: In order to improve patient care by minimal invasive surgery (MIS), we perfected a Virtual TeleSurgical University that allows for teleeducation, teleconcertation, surgical planning and telemanipulation, through new Virtual Reality and multimedia systems.
  
  
  METHODS
  The organization of this innovative school was federated around three major research programs. First, the TESUS program focused on the teletransmission of medical information, allowing for videoconferencing around the world and telementoring. Next, the WeBS-Surg program is a multimedia continuous surgical education system on internet, that allows for teleeducation and teleconcertation between world experts in MIS. Then, the MASTER program (Minimal Access Surgery by Telecommunications and Robotics) allowed the development of the third millenium Operating room. It included Virtual Reality systems that delineate automatically anatomical and pathological structures of a patients from him CT-scan, and that allow for an interactive surgical planning and force-feed-back simulation. It also included a telesurgical robot named Zeus controlled by surgeons through telemanipulation system.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Tests and validation shows that all these systems improved all steps of the surgical procedure: preoperatively due to a better continuous education and a computer assisted surgical planning, and peroperatively due to teleconcertation, telementoring and telemanipulation systems.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Revolutionary tools for minimal invasive surgery learning, planning and performing are all ready available. These tools represents the first prototype of the computer assisted tele-robotical surgery that will be the future of surgery.
authors.affiliation: IRCAD Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Marescaux
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Soler
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mutter
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Leroy
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vix
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Koehl
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Clément
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003199:Computer Systems; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014584:User-Computer Interface