Will haptic feedback speed up medical imaging? An application to radiation treatment planning

Haptic technology enables us to incorporate the sense of touch into computer applications, providing an additional input/ output channel. The purpose of this study was to examine if haptic feedback can help physicians and other practitioners to interact with medical imaging and treatment planning systems. A haptic application for outlining target areas (a key task in radiation therapy treatment planning) was implemented and then evaluated via a controlled experiment with ten subjects. Even though the sample size was small, and the application only a prototype, results showed that haptic feedback can significantly increase (p < 0.05) the speed of outlining target volumes and organs at risk. No significant differences were found regarding precision or perceived usability. This promising result warrants further development of a full haptic application for this task. Improvements to the usability of the application as well as to the forces generated have been implemented and an experiment with more subjects is planned.