Advantages of virtual-reality simulators surgical skill assessment and training include more training time, no risk to patient, repeatable difficulty level, reliable feedback, without the resource demands, and ethical issues of animal-based training. We tested this for a key subtask and showed a strong link between skill in the simulator and in reality. Suturing performance was assessed for four groups of participants, including experienced surgeons and naive subjects, on a custom-made virtual-reality simulator. Each subject tried the experiment 30 times using five different types of needles to perform a standardized suture placement task. Traditional metrics of performance as well as new metrics enabled by our system were proposed, and the data indicate difference between trained and untrained performance. In all traditional parameters such as time, number of attempts, and motion quantity, the medical surgeons outperformed the other three groups, though differences were not significant. However, motion smoothness, penetration and exit angles, tear size areas, and orientation change were statistically significant in the trained group when compared with untrained group. This suggests that these parameters can be used in virtual microsurgery training.
A software defined surgical visual aid platform as an alternative to the existing fixed form optical surgical microscope is described. A software defined digital stereo microscope, similar in principle as an endoscope, decouples the light gathering components and functions from those for light processing and image visualization components and provides digital implementations for the latter. It comprises an array of zoom cameras replacing the microscope objective, a realtime graphics engine pipeline replacing the optical processing pipeline, a flat screen 3D display replacing the oculars and a set of surgeon and procedure presets replacing the initial mechanical setting up of the microscope. The user interfaces for focus and zoom control are retained through the familiar foot pedal and additional interaction devices such as 3D measurement tools are added on demand for analysis and documentation. It replicates and augments the functionality of the optical stereo microscope, but removes the usage limitations of the optical pipeline. To be an effective surgical microscope, the realtime nature of the optical stereo microscope and the hand-eye collocation ability must be retained in this alternative visual aid.
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