Abstract
BackgroundTele-mentoring during surgery facilitates the transfer of surgical knowledge from a mentor (specialist surgeon) to a mentee (operating surgeon). The aim of this work is to develop a tele-mentoring system tailored for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) where the mentor can remotely demonstrate to the mentee the required motion of the surgical instruments.MethodsA remote tele-mentoring system is implemented that generates visual cues in the form of virtual surgical instrument motion overlaid onto the live view of the operative field. The technical performance of the system is evaluated in a simulated environment, where the operating room and the central location of the mentor were physically located in different countries and connected over the internet. In addition, a user study was performed to assess the system as a mentoring tool.ResultsOn average, it took 260 ms to send a view of the operative field of 1920 × 1080 resolution from the operating room to the central location of the mentor and an average of 132 ms to receive the motion of virtual surgical instruments from the central location to the operating room. The user study showed that it is feasible for the mentor to demonstrate and for the mentee to understand and replicate the motion of surgical instruments.ConclusionThe work demonstrates the feasibility of transferring information over the internet from a mentor to a mentee in the form of virtual surgical instruments. Their motion is overlaid onto the live view of the operative field enabling real-time interactions between both the surgeons.
Highlights
Tele-mentoring during surgery facilitates the transfer of surgical knowledge from a mentor to a mentee
While previous user studies [10–13] have compared and demonstrated the advantage of using virtual surgical instruments motion over the static annotations and hand gestures in different surgical scenarios, this study focuses on the ease of generating and replicating the information provided by the mentor to the mentee
It took relatively more time to send the information across the network from the operating room to the central location in the case of Mode II as compared to Mode I (Fig. 6a). This was evident as in Mode II, the operating room and the central location were located geographically apart in two different continents. The delay for both modes were within the limit of 450 ms recommended by Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) for live tele-mentoring [14]
Summary
Tele-mentoring during surgery facilitates the transfer of surgical knowledge from a mentor (specialist surgeon) to a mentee (operating surgeon). Methods A remote tele-mentoring system is implemented that generates visual cues in the form of virtual surgical instrument motion overlaid onto the live view of the operative field. The user study showed that it is feasible for the mentor to demonstrate and for the mentee to understand and replicate the motion of surgical instruments. Conclusion The work demonstrates the feasibility of transferring information over the internet from a mentor to a mentee in the form of virtual surgical instruments. Their motion is overlaid onto the live view of the operative field enabling real-time interactions between both the surgeons
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