Ryan Schmidt and colleagues at the University of Calgary have recently used FarField Technologies' FastRBF^TM Command Line Toolbox to model human spinal vertebrae as part of a spinal surgery simulation. FarFiled's Toolbox is developed on ARANZ's FastRBF research. Visit http://www.unknownroad.com/projects/spinaltap/index.html for further information.

• RBFs are used to reconstruct vertebrae from CT data
• Spline smoothing is used to smooth vertebrae models
• Solid modelling techniques are used to simulate drilling to place screws which are used to fuse damaged vertebrae