Development of a nerve model of eyeball motion nerves to simulate the disorders of eyeball movements for neurologic examination training

Abstract

Cranial nerve examination takes an important role in the physical examination. All the medical staffs need to be trained to master the skills for examination. By now, several training methods have been carried out for medical training including training with the simulated patient (SP). However, considering the characters of eyeball, the involuntary actions cannot be simulated by Sp. With the developments of technology, more and more robot heads have been launched. However, these simulators only focus on mimicking the healthy human abilities, not simulating disorders for medical training. In this paper, we propose a novel eyeball motion nerve model which is used in the head robot named WKH-2(Waseda Kyotokagaku Head Robot No.2). This robot is designed to simulate the disorders of eyeball movements to give the trainee a full training on cranial examination. The motor nerve model is carried out from mimicking the real eyeball nerve structure. And the functions of each part are designed from analysis of the real functions of each organ. In this robot, the effects of eyeball motion nerve system, and various symptoms are simulated. Making use of this robot, a systematic training on the skills as well as the understanding of medical knowledge is provided. Finally, several experiments are carried out to verify our proposed system. The experimental results show that the approach is worth following in further research.