Untethered Haptics-Optional Surgical Training System

An innovative technique is needed to simulate the "look and feel" of open surgery. Current techniques are inadequate for training and measuring surgical skill. Visual feedback is especially important for open surgery, with haptic feedback secondary. Energid Technologies proposes developing an open surgery training system that uses our method of video-based tool tracking. Our approach will unintrusively capture the motions of the surgeon and accurately render the visual scene. This will allow the surgeon to use normal, untethered instruments. This will be combined with optional, untethered magnetic haptic feedback that is made possible through the video-based tool tracking. These techniques will be combined with surgical-skill metrics and training feedback to provide a complete training system. Our archetype procedure will be open splenectomy in a case of splenic trauma.