The aim of the Intersim project was to develop hardware for low cost, realistic endoscopy simulators.

Training and simulation are important parts of today's medical education. However, most training devices and facilities are still not capable of realistic intervention simulation. Those allowing realistic simulations are often very costly.

The aim of the Intersim project was to develop hardware for endoscopy simulators, while fulfilling two main requirements: firstly, a realistic simulation of degrees of freedom and force conditions during endoscopies, and secondly low production costs.

Several functional models were developed and tested by the IMS during the project. Two active and one passive device (with and without force feedback) were evaluated in more detail. One of the active functional models was then implemented with an existing input device for computer games (with force feedback) and finalised in cooperation with the company Virtamed. The end product is now already on the market. The passive functional model on the other hand revealed itself to be a very inexpensive and yet robust system. It is now being refined by Virtamed and will be used in low cost intrauterine endoscopy simulators in a first step.

Further results from the Intersim project, e.g. in the area of touchless angle measurement technology, have already been implemented in other Virtamed products.