HAPTIC INTERFACE OPTIMIZATION FOR VIRTUAL ANASTOMOSIS SURGERY TRAINING

Abstract

Virtual anastomosis surgery study allows surgeons to perform or practice suturing in virtual reality using a commercial haptic device. The haptic device can generate force feedback so that the user can feel the real touch sensation of the object in virtual reality. The virtual anastomosis surgery study has two requirements which are that the haptic device must be fixed on the operating table and haptic device location must be suitable for different surgeons. The goal is to use a commercially available haptic device for this purpose, rather than design a new device for each possible surgery that must be performed. Therefore, it is necessary to do placement optimization to find the best position and orientation that would allow several surgeons to train using those devices.

There are 16 different surgeons who participated and provided their surgery data for the optimization. The first step in this work involved measuring the workspace required for surgery. An electromagnetic tracking system was used to track the position of surgeons' hands when they were performing the suturing. The second step was to model the haptic device to determine its workspace and possible motions. The third was to use optimization to find the position and orientation of the haptic device that would allow the greatest coverage of workspace measured from the surgeons. The fourth step involved performing a dynamic simulation of the haptic device to check for collisions between the haptic device as the surgeons move through the trajectories used to determine the measured workspace. Finally, some preliminary testing was done with actual surgeons to validate whether this process is useful for the haptic interface design.