Instrumented glove for skills assessment in neurosurgical simulation

Surgeon's adverse events may cause severe complications for patients; they are usually caused by the incorrect use of advanced instrumentation, poor training and surgeon fatigue. To avoid them, it is important to evaluate surgeon major variables like: real-time decision making, complex instrument control, manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination and fatigue. In order to provide a more objective assessment of those parameters, this paper presents preliminary results of the implementation of an instrumented glove for the capture of hand gestures. A description of its integration to a previously implemented neurosurgical simulation system is shown. Currently the neurosurgical simulator is able to assess decision making, appropriate use of surgical instruments and also incorporates a pressure sensitive device that gathers ergonomic data for detecting fatigue patterns. Integration of hand gesture information to the neurosurgical simulator can be used to measure fine motor skills parameters such as manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.