Three-dimensional sonification as a surgical guidance tool

Abstract

Interactive Sonification is a well-known guidance method in navigation tasks. Researchers have repeatedly suggested the use of interactive sonification in neuronavigation and image-guided surgery. The hope is to reduce clinicians’ cognitive load through a relief of the visual channel, while preserving the precision provided through image guidance. In this paper, we present a surgical use case, simulating a craniotomy preparation with a skull phantom. Through auditory, visual, and audiovisual guidance, non-clinicians successfully find targets on a skull that provides hardly any visual or haptic landmarks. The results show that interactive sonification enables novice users to navigate through three-dimensional space with a high precision. The precision along the depth axis is highest in the audiovisual guidance mode, but adding audio leads to higher durations and longer motion trajectories.

Introduction to the special issue on design and perception of interactive sonification

“…Tim Ziemer [9] demonstrates that the psychoacoustic sonification design for three dimensions [10] enables naïve users to navigate through a three-dimensional space with high precision in a surgical use case. This example of applied psychoacoustics in the design of interactive sonification may pave the way to supplementing and, partly, even substituting visualizations in multiple applications.…”