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Monitoring with head-mounted displays: performance and safety in a full-scale simulator and part-task trainer
David Liu1, Simon A Jenkins, Penelope M Sanderson
1School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. naskies@acm.org
Anesthesia and Analgesia
|September 19, 2009
Summary
Head-mounted displays (HMDs) aided anesthesiologists in detecting events when physically constrained, but did not worsen inattentional blindness. Focus adjustment is key for optimal HMD use in surgery.
Area of Science:
- Anesthesiology
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Medical Simulation
Background:
- Head-mounted displays (HMDs) offer potential for continuous intraoperative monitoring of patient vital signs.
- Concerns exist regarding HMDs exacerbating inattentional blindness and causing perceptual issues, as suggested by aviation research.
- Simulator-based experiments were conducted to investigate these potential drawbacks in an anesthesia context.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the impact of HMD use on anesthesiologists' event detection capabilities.
- To determine if HMD focus settings (near vs. far) influence event detection.
- To assess HMD performance in simulated scenarios with varying levels of physical constraint.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Twelve anesthesiologists performed simulated anesthesia with HMDs (near/far focus) in naturalistic scenarios, detecting 24 events.
- Experiment 2: Twelve anesthesiologists performed a simulated endoscopic task while monitoring a patient, with and without HMDs, experiencing four events each.
- Both experiments utilized simulated operating theater environments and patient monitoring systems.
Main Results:
- HMD use did not significantly impair event detection or increase detection time in Experiment 1.
- Participants preferred the near focus setting and spent more time viewing the patient with HMDs.
- In Experiment 2, HMDs improved detection for some events but not others; participants reported easier monitoring and less perceived workload.
Conclusions:
- HMDs assisted anesthesiologists in event detection when physically constrained during procedures.
- No conclusive evidence of increased inattentional blindness was found, but display properties may affect attention.
- Recommendations include self-adjusting HMD focus and awareness of potential attentional capture issues; further research on HMD design and clinical evaluation is warranted.
