1. Context

The medical situation in the world is truly complex: more and more patients, fewer and fewer practitioners, increasingly high, even prohibitive costs. One of the avenues to be pursued is the advanced use of today's techniques, notably IT, to help professionals accomplish their tasks. Two aspects are particularly important in surgery: planning and execution in the operating theatre. Very often, the planning aspect requires more work time than the actual operation. The overall aim of the project described in this article was to design and implement a computerized system to assist surgeons and radiologists in their clinical procedures, both in the pre-operative phase and during the actual operation. The ultimate aim is to provide them with effective, time-saving and performance-enhancing tools, but by no means to replace them with a computer.

More and more surgical...