Safdari, Amer2019-09-172019-09-172019-07https://hdl.handle.net/11299/206721University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. July 2019. Major: Biomedical Engineering. Advisor: Timothy Kowalewski. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 93 pages.By 2030, the United States will find itself short of almost 100,000 physicians to care for its population. This has significant implications not only for patients, hospitals, and health care providers around the country -- but also for educators. The objective of this thesis, in a broad sense, is to explore techniques and science needed for more accurate surgical simulation. More specifically, the particular niche that has been carved out by my work as a Masters student is quantifying the change in tissue properties between the in-vivo tissues that physicians work with, and the ex-vivo tissues that biomechanicians commonly study due to convenience. The implications of this work will hopefully help drive the development of more accurate next generation medical simulators. A prototype device design, experimental protocol, and data analysis strategy is proposed to quantify the change in in-vivo to ex-vivo tissue response. This is validated on n = 4 porcine carcasses and lays the groundwork for an imminent n = 5 in-vivo porcine study. The last chapter of this thesis presents another avenue of improving medical simulators, by providing a case study on the kinematic assessment of urinary catheterization. The unifying theme consists of introducing technologies for procedural instrumentation to bring more quantitative rigor to surgical science.enThesis or Dissertation