Augmented Virtual Reality for Laparoscopic Surgical Tool Training

Feedback in surgical simulation has been limited to offline analysis of movement, time taken to complete simulation and in some cases a virtual playback of completed simulation tasks. In comparison to aircraft simulation, these feedback schemes are very rudimentary. Research in military simulations has shown that real time feedback significantly improves performance on the task at hand and leads to skill generalization and transfer. However, such systems have not been developed for surgical simulation. Lack of effective feedback systems also has the added effect of increasing workload of senior surgeons leading to increased costs and decreased overall efficiency. In a pilot study performed with 8 surgical residents, we tested the effect of real time feedback on movement proficiency.