Feasibility of tracking in open surgical simulation

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop an adequate tracking method for open surgical training, using tracking of the instrument or hand motions. An open surgical training model and the SurgTrac application were used to track four separate suturing tasks. These tasks were performed with colour markings of either instruments or fingers, to find the most promising setting for reliable tracking. Four experiments were used to find the optimal settings for the tracking system. Tracking of instruments was not usable for knot tying by hand. Tracking of fingers seemed to be a more promising method. Tagging the fingers with a coloured balloon-tube, seemed to be a more promising method (1.2–3.0% right hand vs. 9.2–17.9% left hand off-screen) than covering the nails with coloured tape (1.5–3.5% right hand vs. 25.5–55.4% left hand off-screen). However, analysis of the videos showed that redness of the hand was seen as red tagging as well. To prevent misinterpreting of the red tag by redness of the hand, white surgical gloves were worn underneath in the last experiment. The off-screen percentage of the right side decreased from 1.0 to 1.2 without gloves to 0.8 with gloves and the off-screen percentage of the left side decreased from 16.9–17.9 to 6.6–7.2, with an adequate tracking mark on the video images. This study shows that tagging of the index fingers with a red (right) and blue (left) balloon-tube while wearing surgical gloves is a feasible method for tracking movements during basic open suturing tasks.