Dear WashCAS attendee:

Happy New Year to all!

We are extremely pleased to announce that the first talk of the
Washington Area Computer Aided Surgery Society 2003 program will be given
by Ken  Salisbury, PhD, of Stanford University and Intuitive Surgical
Systems.  The date is Tuesday 21 January at 7:00 pm on the NIH main
campus.

The title is "Enhancing Surgery Through Robotics and Simulation" and the
abstract is:

"In the last few years we have seen the introduction of robotic
technologies into the field of minimally invasive surgery. Significant
surgical skill enhancement has been achieved through a mixing of MIS
techniques with newly developed robotics and human-machine interface
technologies.  Today's emerging robotically enhanced surgical systems
provide surgeons with a vastly improved user interface, enhanced
visualization and haptic capabilities, full 6 degree-of-freedom
mobility, and a more complete integration of information and
manipulation resources. This enables surgeons to perform via minimally
invasive techniques complex procedures which previously were only
possible via open technique.  More importantly, the new technologies
provide an opportunity for clinical integration of pre- and
intra-operative navigational aids and other sensory enhancements.  This
also provides an environment in which simulation techniques can be used
to great advantage in preoperative planning and training."

This talk will review these emerging technologies, with specific
reference to Dr. Salisbury's work with Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci
Surgical System and his NIH-funded work at Stanford University on
collaborative simulation-based surgical training. Dr. Salisbury's
biography is given at the end of this email. Please forward this
announcement to your friends and colleagues who may be interested.

The meeting will be held in the Lister Hill Center, Building 38A, behind
the National Library of Medicine on the NIH Campus in Bethesda. The
visitor's entrance is on South Drive off of Wisconsin Avenue, next to the
metro stop. Drivers and passengers should be prepared to present photo
IDs. Vehicle hoods and trunks may be opened for inspection.

Parking is either in front of the building (the meters shouldn't be
running by then), on the side of the building (near the loading dock...
parking is permitted in "NIH-only" spaces at that hour), or in the
building 41 parking lot (around and behind building 41, essentially
across the street from the parking deck).  The NLM parking deck may still
be closed in the evenings due to a lack of security personnel to screen
and clear vehicles.

For directions, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/directions.html

The meeting schedule is:
        6:30 - 7:00 pm: refreshments and food in lobby
        7:00 - 8:00 pm: speaker and discussion

Please remember that absolutely no food is allowed in the meeting room.

If you are even considering attending, please RSVP by replying to this
email or let one of the society officers know. This is not required, but
helps us in planning the food order as well as giving a list of
potential attendees to the security personnel.

We are now using our mailing list for these announcements. If you wish to
unsubscribe, please send email to cleary@georgetown.edu. For those who
did not receive this announcement and wish to subscribe to the mailing
list, ask them to send email to join@washcas.org and they will be
automatically added. WashCAS meetings are held every other month on the
third Tuesday of the month. For WashCAS news, see www.washcas.org

Sincerely,

Kevin Cleary, PhD
Georgetown University
ISIS Center
(202) 687-8253
cleary@georgetown.edu

James Burgess, M.D.
Neurosurgery
Inova Fairfax Hospital
(703) 718-0314
burgessj@pol.net

Gerald Higgins, Ph.D.
Simquest
(301) 565-2033
Higgins@simquest.com

Terry Yoo, PhD
National Library of Medicine
(301) 435-3268
yoo@nlm.nih.gov