Design of a web-based medical database for computer assisted orthopedic surgery

The recent development of computer assisted orthopedic surgery (CAOS) provides a great potential to improve the clinical outcomes [1]. One key feature of CAOS is the introduction of the computer based technical systems to perform the surgical missions including advanced medical imaging modalities like CT, MRI for data acquisition, preoperative planning and surgical simulation and optimisation, intra-operative navigation and robotic systems [2,3]. As the number of CAOS application increases, it becomes increasingly necessary to collect the related experiences for both educational and developmental purpose. Within the framework of the European VOEU-project (Virtual Orthopedic European University, EC-Project IST-1999-13079, Information Society Technology Program), a web-based medical database called "Virtual Observatory" (VO) will be developed to meet this demands by collecting different cases of CAOS application [4]. In this paper we will present the design concept of the VO database.