A Study on the Perception of Haptics in Surgical Simulation

Physically accurate modeling of human soft-tissue is an active research area in surgical simulation. The challenge is compounded by the need for real-time feedback. A good understanding of human haptic interaction can facilitate tissue modeling research, as achieving accuracy beyond perception may be counterproductive. This paper studies human sensitivity to haptic feedback. Specifically, the ability of individuals to consistently recall specific haptic experience, and their ability to perceive latency in haptic feedback. Results suggest that individual performance varies widely, and that this ability is not correlated with clinical experience. A surprising result was the apparent insensitivity of test subjects to significant latency in haptic feedback. The implications of our findings to the design and development of surgical simulators are discussed.