Novel virtual reality based training system for fine motor skills: Towards developing a robotic surgery training
Madhan Kumar Vasudevan1, Joseph H R Isaac1,2, Venkatraman Sadanand3
1Touch Lab, Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Background:
Training surgeons to use surgical robots are becoming part of surgical training curricula. We propose a novel method of training fine-motor skills such as Microscopic Selection Task (MST) for robot-assisted surgery using virtual reality (VR) with objective quantification of performance. We also introduce vibrotactile feedback (VTFB) to study its impact on training performance.
Methods:
We use a VR-based environment to perform MST with varying degrees of difficulties. Using a well-known human-computer interaction paradigm and incorporating VTFB, we quantify the performance: speed, precision and accuracy.
Results:
MST with VTFB showed statistically significant improvement in performance metrics leading to faster completion of MST with higher precision and accuracy compared to that without VTFB.
Discussion:
The addition of VTFB to VR-based training for robot-assisted surgeries may improve performance outcomes in real robotic surgery. VTFB, along with proposed performance metrics, can be used in training curricula for robot-assisted surgeries.
