The Role of Haptic Feedback in the Training and Assessment of Surgeons using a Virtual Environment

Haptic feedback plays an important role in the development of high fidelity virtual training environments for surgeons. The coupling of virtual simulation environments with instrumented data collection methods would allow quantification of performance. This work demonstrates the use of such a system to achieve quantitative evaluation of suturing performance. Force application, time to task completion, length and straightness of the suture have been measured. The paper concludes that performance improved over trials in terms of time to complete and accuracy of the length of suturing. Force feedback affected force application, task completion time and the straightness of suturing.

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