Customization of a low-end haptic device to add rotational DOF for virtual cardiac auscultation training

Abstract

Cardiac auscultation is a cost-effective medical procedure used to examine the heart and obtain information regarding the hearts rate, rhythm, location timing, intensity, quality, and shape. Relying on visual, audio and haptic cues, it is a difficult skill to master and with the availability of various new diagnostic techniques, the emphasis on cardiac auscultation is decreasing in both education and practice settings. Traditional cardiac auscultation training is focused on memorizing various heart sounds and their corresponding diagnosis. Recent hardware and computational advancements are providing the opportunity to develop virtual-based medical simulations that employ a high level of fidelity and novel user-simulation interaction techniques using off-the-shelf consumer-level hardware and devices. However, these virtual applications are generally restricted to cognitive skills training given that the simulation of accurate haptic cues required to replicate the sense of touch (an important component of many medical procedures including cardiac auscultation), is still difficult and cost-prohibitive. Although several low fidelity and low-cost gaming-based haptic devices are currently available, they are generally restrictive and cannot provide the range of motions (degrees of freedom) required to simulate many medical procedures. Here we describe an approach to add rotational degrees of freedom to the Novint Falcon, a consumer level (gaming) haptics device, by coupling a smartphone and incorporating the smartphone's accelerometer data to the haptics virtual controller. Our goal is to overcome the limitations associated with the limited degrees of freedom available on consumer level haptic devices and permit their use in medical technical skills-based simulation training with an affordable approach.