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           COLLOQUIUM OF THE COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE CENTER
                             College of Science
                      (CDS Department CSI 898-Sec 001)
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  Simulation and Virtual Reality for Education and Medical Applications
                           Jim X. Chen,
      Department of Computer Science, George Mason University

I present an overview of several projects in the Graphics Lab at George Mason
University: Simulation of Fluids (funded by US Army STRICOM), Eductainment
--Learning through Playing (funded by NSF and Department of Education),
Knee Surgery Assistance System (Funded by Edward MacMahon, M.D.), Virtual Ear
Surgery (collaboration with Fudan Universityâ™s Eye and ENT Hospital),
Virtual Human Anatomy (collaboration with Sichuan Continuing Education College
of Medical Sciences), and Designing a New Graphics Pipeline. Some descriptions
and images are at http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~jchen/exhibit.html. 
1. Simulation of Fluids
We introduce our methods and results in achieving both realistic and real-time
water and dust behaviors. The methods include using simplified computational
fluid dynamics, physics-based modeling, particle systems, and lens effects.
The results are useful in training, education, and entertainment. 
2. Edutainment: Learning through Playing
We have implemented several projects for learning abstract scientific
concepts. Project Computational Steering is for visualizing Navier-Stokes
equations. Project Science Space is for learning Maxwellâ™s equations and
Newtonâ™s Laws in virtual environment with multiple sensory inputs. Project
DEVISE (Designing Environments for Virtual Immersive Science Education) is
building a learning environment that can be used to help high school students
with learning disabilities more effectively understand abstract scientific
concepts. Project MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments for Teaching and
Learning Science) is creating and evaluating multi-user virtual environments
(MUVEs) that use digitized museum resources to enhance middle school students'
motivation and learning. 
3. Knee Surgery Assistance, Virtual Ear Surgery, and Virtual Human Anatomy
We have implemented several virtual reality systems for medical applications.
A knee surgery assistance system includes generating patient-specific 3D knee
models from patientâ™s magnetic resonant images (MRIs), simulating knee
motion on the patient-specific knee model, and visualizing biomechanical
information on the model. A virtual ear surgery system includes temporal bone
construction, visualization, and virtual surgery. A virtual human anatomy
system includes natural color human body with separated organs and labels.
Virtual anatomy is achieved through a phantom device. 
4. Designing a New Graphics Pipeline for Atomic Primitives
We present our line drawing and anti-aliasing methods that are more than 10
times faster than existing algorithms under certain conditions. Also we
discovered that most graphics primitives are atomic ⓠsmall in size. To
address this property, we design a new graphics pipeline that is faster for
atomic primitives. 

                           March 26, 4:30 pm
                   Room 301, Research I, Fairfax Campus

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM.
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Find the schedule at http://www.cmasc.gmu.edu/seminar/schedule.html
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