Portable virtual endoscope system with force and visual display

A "Portable Virtual Endoscope System" (Portable VES) with haptic ability is developed. This Portable VES can present not only computer graphical images of an internal view of a virtual intestine but also reaction force through the endoscope. Unlike previous VES, the Portable VES has a simpler drive mechanism to achieve haptic ability. A large deformable dynamical model of both intestine and endoscope are formulated and implemented in the Pentium based microcomputer. Simulation and basic performance for clinical training are verified successfully by several experiments.