A Review of Training and Guidance Systems in Medical Surgery

Abstract

In this paper, a map of the state of the art of recent medical simulators that provide evaluation and guidance for surgical procedures is performed. The systems are reviewed and compared from the viewpoint of the used technology, force feedback, learning evaluation, didactic and visual aid, guidance, data collection and storage, and type of solution (commercial or non-commercial). The works’ assessment was made to identify if—(1) current applications can provide assistance and track performance in training, and (2) virtual environments are more suitable for practicing than physical applications. Automatic analysis of the papers was performed to minimize subjective bias. It was found that some works limit themselves to recording the session data to evaluate them internally, while others assess it and provide immediate user feedback. However, it was found that few works are currently implementing guidance, aid during sessions, and assessment. Current trends suggest that the evaluation process’s automation could reduce the workload of experts and let them focus on improving the curriculum covered in medical education. Lastly, this paper also draws several conclusions, observations per area, and suggestions for future work.

The Use of Computer Navigation and Patient Specific Instrumentation in Shoulder Arthroplasty: Everyday Practice, Just for Special Cases or Actually Teaching a Surgeon?

“…Learning curve is difficult in life-critical areas (e.g. medicine), where the required level of expertise is high, and students need to spend a considerable amount of time in operation rooms or using training stations ( 8 ).…”

“…Moreover, computer-aided shoulder navigation is especially useful in situations where normal anatomy is distorted, such as with fractures, revisions, and glenoid wear or dysplasia ( 8 ).…”

VIS-HAPT: A Methodology Proposal to Develop Visuo-Haptic Environments in Education 4.0

“…In the medical field, haptic training environments have also been used to perform diverse procedures in surgery such as suturing [13]. Dental training with artificial teeth has also used haptic tools, and oral implant therapy has used haptic technologies as a relevant part of the dental practice [14,15].…”

“…Visuo-haptic applications have been successfully applied in various simulators in both physics instruction [6,22,30] and medical training [14,15]. In our case, the educational scenario selection is being crafted by first highlighting the main physics concepts in which forces are relevant.…”

An Application-Based Review of Haptics Technology

“…A realistic manufacturing plan for a 5-axis CNC milling process in a multi-sensory virtual environment with visual, haptic, and aural feedback was proposed in [9]. Haptic devices operate based on haptic feedback provided in the form of force and/or torque from objects in a real, teleoperated, or computer-generated environment through a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) [10,11]. Owing to the bidirectional and symmetrical interaction capabilities of haptic devices, the use of haptic apparatus has been productive while collaborating with computer systems to provide real-time feedback on a remote environment [5,12].…”