In clinical medicine, virtual reality technologies have been applied to the development of surgical simulators and in desensitization therapies for patients with phobias. Biological research involving the simulation and visualization of virtual cells and the virtual human has developed rapidly through the application of computer science, informatics and virtual reality methodologies. The trajectory of medical virtual reality research is now changing, with the focus shifting from realizing immersive technology towards developing a Human Principle Engine, constituted through processes of autonomy and interaction among the fields of biology, physics and informatics. This paper outlines existing applications of virtual reality in medical fields, and emphases the necessity of applying supercomputing science in future development.

 Usually, people train for their skills by using driving simulators for driver’s licenses and flight simulators for the flight by airplanes. With the same idea, it should be necessary to use surgical simulators in order to train for surgical skills, and these days several simulators are being developed in many institutes. Surgical simulators enable surgeons to obtain the opportunity for surgery trainings without patient’s burdens and animal bodies. With the simulators, doctors can train for not only general pathologies but also rare cases, and also it is possible to inspect the pre-operation planning based on the data from real patients. Surgical simulators use virtual reality technology, which enables us to get a stereo view of the computer screen and to touch the object displayed on the screen. In this paper, a surgical simulator developed by the authors for ophthalmologists and its components are described.

 Recent spread of minimally invasive surgeries with robotics forces surgeons to acquire high procedural skills and more experience. Since cardiovascular surgeons relatively deal with difficult surgeries, a support system is desired for education and preoperative design. To satisfy these requirements, this study developed the ActiveHeart system that presents virtual reality based simulation for cardiac surgeries. The system has a geometrical and physical simulation framework for sequential dataset of a beating heart, and provides real time deformation and incision on cardiac muscle and aorta. A result of simulation presents visual and haptic feedback to the surgeons interactively. Our system also simulates realistic surgical environments that produce grasping, manipulating, volumetric cutting and physical constraint between surgical instruments and soft tissues. This paper describes efficiency of our system by illustrating some clinical use such as diagnosis with real time visualization, procedural training, and preoperative planning.

 This paper describes the presentation of a three dimensional (3D) ultrasound heart image on an immersive projection system (IPS). A 3D image was reconstructed from B-mode images that were acquired with transesophageal echocardiography. After the B-mode image acquisition, the following image processings were applied; masking, segmentation using gradient relaxation method, coordinate transformation and surface rendering using marching cube method. The reconstructed 3D image was presented on the IPS, which consists of large screens with the size of 3×2.4 m. The screen surround an observer and the observer can see a stereoscopic image on the central screen and hear the heart beat sound in the environment. The immersive environment could present large field of view, interactive browsing and free movement of an eye position. Therefore, our developed system has the potential to be the visual interface for the future robot surgery.

 In this paper, an integrated information support system for telesurgery, named “Surgical Cockpit System,” is proposed. The surgical cockpit system consists of two function units, integrated information management for supporting telesurgery, and effective layout visualization of supporting information. This research mainly focused on telepresence around operating field and an operating table to a remote surgeon placed on a remote console. The telepresence for supporting teleoperation is minimally required for telesurgery. The authors researched on evaluating effectiveness of immersive circumstantial view, effectiveness of three-sides-view presentation around operating field, and effect of video streaming delay for tele-surgical operation. The authors have also done telesurgery experiment between Tokyo University and Kyoto University Hospital by connecting with broadband wide-area network, “Japan Gigabit Network.”

 Recent matured virtual reality (VR) technologies produces highly immersive environment with reasonable priced equipments. Therefore, recent matured VR technologies boost up many researches applying VR for assisting people with disabilities. This paper reviews current trend of VR-based assistive technology (VR-AT) researches. VR-AT research includes simulations of assistive equipments such as wheelchairs, training environments of social lives, computer aided education (CAE) systems for the learning disableds, communication aid for the Deafs and the Blinds, and so on. Successful researches share same strategy, that is, to maximize “reality” which only VR holds, to avoid expensive VR equipments, and to develop under close communication with users. Future trend is to include mobile computing techniques to make VR-AT researches to mediate human-human communications.

 Horseback-riding therapy has been developed in Europe and has become popular especially in Germany and England. It is said to be effective in satisfying the health-care needs of elderly people, such as, for preventing backaches arising from deformed body postures, for revitalizing lumbar and abdominal muscles, for avoiding stumbles and falls, and for preventing stopping. Since riding does not cause any psychological burden that usually associated with conventional forms of physical training and rehabilitation programs, it can be described as a training to regain physical functions suitable for the elderly. The only drawback is that one need to have access to live horses, which limits the wide spread application of this method due to the difficulties such as maintenance, nurturing environments and in repeating routine activities etc.

 Under the circumstances described above, we developed a horseback riding therapy system by adopting VR technology in order to make the therapy available to healthy elderly prople for revitalization of their physical functions. Two different versions of the therapy are being implemented. The first version reproduces both the precise movements of the saddle and a stripped down and the next one is a home use system that employs a simpler and more cost-effective mechanism yet achieves the purpose of physical training. As a result of an experiment involving elderly subjects, the system is found to be effective in improving abdominal strength, back strength, and the strength of both extension and flexing of knee muscles. The system is also proved to be effective in preventing stumble, fall and backaches arising from deformed body postures.