Surgical Innovation

The ORI surgical innovation group is creating tools to improve education, training, and planning of head and neck surgical procedures. The innovation group is also designing approaches to patient education that will help patients better understand their proposed surgical procedure. Using computer science and virtual reality (VR) simulation, the team has created a platform that allows students, surgeons and patients the opportunity to learn, design and understand the complexities of temporal bone surgery. VR simulation is an important addition to traditional teaching and planning approaches.

The SurgiSim platform is powered by CardinalSim, a VR tool developed at Stanford University and further refined at the University of Calgary and Western University. SurgiSim’s vision is: Enabling surgeons to perform the best surgery. SurgiSim’s mission is: To create a suite of applications that provides high-fidelity, interactive, virtual environments to effectively teach, plan and practice Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery.