  Preoperative gestures include tactile sampling of the mechanical properties
of biological tissue for both histological and pathological considerations.
Tactile properties used in conjunction with visual cues can provide useful
feedback to the surgeon. Development of novel cost effective haptic-based
simulators and their introduction in the minimally invasive surgery learning
cycle can absorb the learning curve for your residents. Receiving pre-training
in a core set of surgical skills can reduce skill acquisition time and risks.
We present the integration of a real-time surface stiffness adjustment
algorithm and a novel paradigm -- force maps -- in a visuo-haptic simulator
module designed to train internal organs disease diagnostics through palpation.
