Epidural anesthesia, despite being a relatively common medical procedure, remains quite demanding in terms of skills as it is mostly blind and thus heavily reliant on the haptic sensations. Although some training support solutions exist, anesthetists consider them mostly inefficient or impractical. A few attempts at creating a simulator for this particular procedure exist but each one lacks one of the important requirements of the procedure. This article introduces a haptic simulator featuring a more complete and realistic simulation of the procedure than we could observe in existing simulators. The simulator is composed of a generic electrical haptic interface coupled with a pneumatic cylinder.

Mastering medical gestures, such as epidural needle insertion, requires much practice. Haptic interfaces can be efficient training solutions. Nevertheless, they must provide users with an accurate experience for an effective training. This article introduces a control framework that turns a pneumatic cylinder into a haptic interface able to simulate a syringe and more specifically the loss of resistance phenomenon encountered during an epidural needle insertion. To achieve this, the framework switches between two control laws (position and force tracking) according to the system state. Experiments involving two anesthetists confirm the practicality of this system for hands-on training or rehearsal purposes.