Founded by Cornell University students, building on research conducted at Cornell.
Projects
A platform for fabricating uterine phantoms from patient imaging: an imaging-compatible PVA formulation, mechanical benchmarking against published uterine tissue values, and surgeon feedback on realism. The procedure-specific trainers build on it.
Adds a fibroid of different stiffness to the uterine platform, with a defined, gradable task: fibroid enucleation, hemostasis, and multi-layer closure. A validation study comparing novice and expert performance is planned.
An anatomically complete, MRI-compatible pelvic phantom, segmented from patient MRI, for studying needle deflection during MRI-guided prostate biopsy.
Phantom materials are usually matched to tissue stiffness but rarely tested for whether they hold a suture. This study treats suture retention and stiffness as separate design variables in a PVA/PAM hydrogel.
Under review
Decoupling Suture Retention from Stiffness in Hydrogel Surgical Training Phantoms
A modular PVA hydrogel simulator for total laparoscopic hysterectomy training, with stiffness tuned through polymer concentration and freeze–thaw cycles and benchmarked against published uterine tissue values.
Presented
Development of a Modular, High-Fidelity Physical Simulator for Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Training
A tunable PVA-based surrogate for fat, a tissue most simulators only roughly approximate, aimed at matching how real fat handles and cuts.
What does an automated skill model actually learn? Using robot kinematics from the public JIGSAWS dataset, we compare skill models when a surgeon's own trials appear in training against when that surgeon is held out entirely, and test whether a model's confidence can flag which trials to hand back to a human rater.
Under review
What does a surgical skill model measure? Quantifying identity confounding and miscalibration on JIGSAWS
With Dr. Suélia Rosa, our team helped run a summer biomedical engineering program for about 20 Ithaca-area high school students, built around technology for menopause health. The program produced MenoTwin, a health-monitoring web app.
Under review
MenoTwin: A Pre-College Biomedical Engineering Program Focused on Women’s Health
Outputs
What does a surgical skill model measure? Quantifying identity confounding and miscalibration on JIGSAWS
Decoupling Suture Retention from Stiffness in Hydrogel Surgical Training Phantoms
MenoTwin: A Pre-College Biomedical Engineering Program Focused on Women’s Health
Development of a Modular, High-Fidelity Physical Simulator for Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Training
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