When three Canadian PhD students started talking to each other about their doctorate projects, they could not have imagined it would lead to them working with Hollywood special effects wizards, computer programmers and leading hospitals.

Yet, just eight years after they started collaborating, the ground-breaking surgical software developed by David Gobbi, a medical biophysicist, Yves Starreveld, a neurosurgeon, and Kirk Finnis, a neuroscientist, is poised to enter operating theatres around the world.