Examining surgeon’s eye-hand coordination during microsurgery

Are we using surgical simulation the right way? At present, the surgical curriculum uses simulation mainly to familiarize students with instruments and surgical techniques or as an objective assessment of skills performance. What if we could use surgical simulation to personalize the teaching of a surgeon in training (surgery resident)?

This research will use eye-tracking (participant’s eye movement), motion-tracking (movement of the instruments) and force-tracking (force applied to the instrument) technologies to identify the differences between board certified neurosurgeons (expert) and neurosurgery residents (novice) during simulated surgical procedures. By describing these differences, we will be able to provide instant and individualized feedback to the surgical residents so they can develop a technique similar to the expert.

I expect that the knowledge gained will help the neurosurgical community design a better training curriculum for neurosurgical residents. The ultimate goal is to eventually report the correlation between simulation and clinical benefits and hopefully prove that simulation in neurosurgery leads to an improvement in patient outcome and safety.

Faculty Supervisor:

Cian O'Kelly;Bin Zheng

Student:

Partner:

University of Eastern Finland

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education; Technology; Health and Related Sciences & Technology

University:

University of Alberta

Program: