Purpose

In laparoscopic surgery training, experts guide novice physicians to desired instrument positions or indicate relevant areas of interest. These instructions are usually given via verbal communication or using physical pointing devices. To facilitate a sterile work flow and to improve training, new guiding methods are needed. This work proposes to use optical see-through augmented reality to visualize an interactive virtual pointer on the laparoscopic.

Methods

After an interdisciplinary development, the pointer’s applicability and feasibility for training was evaluated and it was compared to a standard condition based on verbal and gestural communication only. In this study, ten surgical trainees were guided by an experienced trainer during cholecystectomies on a laparoscopic training simulator. All trainees completed a virtual cholecystectomy with and without the interactive virtual pointer in alternating order. Measures included procedure time, economy of movement and error rates.

Results

Results of standardized variables revealed significantly improved economy of movement (p = 0.047) and error rates (p = 0.047), as well as an overall improved user performance (Total z-score; p = 0.031) in conditions using the proposed method.

Conclusion

The proposed HoloPointer is a feasible and applicable tool for laparoscopic surgery training. It improved objective performance metrics without prolongation of the task completion time in this pre-clinical setup.

中文翻译：

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HoloPointer：用于腹腔镜手术培训的虚拟增强现实指示器

目的

在腹腔镜手术培训中，专家会指导新手医师到达所需的器械位置或指示感兴趣的相关领域。这些说明通常通过口头交流或使用物理指点设备给出。为了促进无菌工作流程并改善培训，需要新的指导方法。这项工作建议使用光学透明增强现实技术在腹腔镜上可视化交互式虚拟指示器。

方法

经过跨学科的发展，评估了指针的适用性和可行性，并将其与仅基于言语和手势沟通的标准条件进行了比较。在这项研究中，十名外科手术学员在腹腔镜训练模拟器上在胆囊切除术期间由经验丰富的教练指导。所有学员均以交替顺序在有无交互式虚拟指针的情况下完成了虚拟胆囊切除术。度量包括程序时间，移动的经济性和错误率。

结果

标准化变量的结果表明 ， 在使用拟议方法的条件下，移动经济性（p  = 0.047）和错误率（p = 0.047）显着提高，并且用户的总体表现得到改善（Total z -score; p = 0.031）。

结论

提出的HoloPointer是用于腹腔镜手术培训的可行且适用的工具。在这种临床前设置中，它改进了客观绩效指标，而没有延长任务完成时间。