Simulators in medical procedures are important tools for learning, teaching and training allowing practices in a wide range of scenarios of life-like situations. In the field of vascular access, the use of virtual reality has been emerging as a complement to address the current problems due to the low availability of simulation manikins for training and its high cost. Intraosseous access in newborns is an invasive, fast and effective medical procedure of high complexity employed in critically ill newborns as an option to access veins after peripheral access has failed. Due to vein vasoconstriction present in neonatal shock and cardiorespiratory arrest among other life-threatening conditions it is difficult to perform any other forms of venous access. Intraosseous access requires the proper handling of the related equipment and knowledge, this is only possible with continuous training that cannot be done in real patients. Mastering this technique is required to preserve patient's life, achieve a good recovery and reduce the risk of infection or even death. This paper presents the development of a newborn's intraosseous access simulator for training covering the required steps involved in the procedure. To increase the immersion of the simulation, a force feedback haptic device is integrated to simulate the needle insertion beneath leg tissues to the bone with a biomechanical tissue model, which is the more important skill to be developed in this procedure, and a consumer head mounted display to provide a stereo view of the operation room to give depth to the user when approaching to the patient leg. Our preliminary results were evaluated by a medical expert in terms of usability of the prototype.

Central venous access is an invasive medical procedure of high complexity used in critically ill patients. Its implementation requires great skills and knowledge from a health care specialist. Advances in patient simulators present solutions regarding children and adults, however, newborn simulators are scarce. This paper presents the development of a newborn's central venous access simulator for training and educational purposes. The simulation system is composed of three main subsystems: a procedural simulation, showing how the procedure must be correctly performed; a haptic subsystem for increasing realism; and finally a newborn manikin with image projection for guiding the procedure.

Augmented reality allows simulating, designing, projecting and validating robotic workcells in industrial environments that are not equipped with real manipulators. In this paper a study and implementation of a gestural programmed robotic workcell through augmented reality is presented. The result was an interactive environment in which the user can program an industrial robot through gestures, accomplished from the development of a computer based framework.

The use of surgical simulators with virtual reality allows surgeons to practice diverse types of procedures for minimizing any risk on patients during the real surgery. This paper describes a prototype for a Minimal Invasive Surgery (MIS) simulator with haptic feedback applied to an endoscopic endonasal surgery. The research is divided in three parts: the simulation of a rigid endoscope device with four degrees of freedom (pitch, yaw, roll and dolly), a simplified model of the nasal tissue for fast haptic rendering and the integration with a virtual reality simulation system with collision detection. The main contribution of the paper is the rigid endoscope model using a simple lever acting as a force transformer pivoting in the nostril. The obtained results show a suitable response of the system for an interactive simulation.