Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) involves a multidimensional series of tasks requiring a synthesis between visual information and the kinematics and dynamics of the surgical tools. Analysis of these sources of information is a key step in mastering MIS but may also be used to define objective criteria for characterizing surgical performance. The BlueDRAGON is a new system for acquiring the kinematics and the dynamics of two endoscopic tools along synchronized with the visual view of the surgical scene. It includes two four-bar passive mechanisms equipped with position and force torque sensors for measuring the positions and the orientations (P/O) of two endoscopic tools along with the forces and torques (F/T) applied by the surgeon's hands. The methodology of decomposing the surgical task is based on a fully connected, 28 finite-states Markov model where each states corresponded to a fundamental tool/tissue interaction based on the tool kinematics and associated with unique F/T s...
Jacob Rosen, Jeffrey D. Brown, Lily Chang, Marco B