| Summary: | The objective of this work is to establish a methodology for reliably quantifying the
performance of an expert surgeon in laparoscopy with the long-term goal of validating
surgical simulations. A validated simulation will allow us to quantitatively assess surgeon
performance and evaluate new tool designs. Quantitative performance and skill
assessments are critical for evaluating the progress of surgical residents and the efficacy
of different training programs. Current evaluation methods are subjective and potentially
unreliable, so there is a need for objective methods to evaluate surgical performance. We
identify a feasible method to measure kinematic and postural data in the live operating
room setting. We used an optoelectronic motion analysis system to acquire postural data
and tool tip trajectories of one expert surgeon over a period of four months. To assess
reliability of performance measures, we created a hierarchical decomposition diagram
describing the procedure in terms of surgical tasks, tool sequences and fundamental tool
actions. Using tool tip kinematic data and postural data we extracted characteristic
measures of performance and compared these measured distributions using the
Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic. For the most part our performance measures (with the
exception of kinematic measures) show consistent reliability over time by a trained
surgeon and little effect from patient variability, and so are likely reliable measures of
performance. An expanded set of reliable kinematic measures will form the basis for
quantifying surgical skill and should be useful in validating surgical simulations for use
in training, certifying surgeons and designing and evaluating new surgical tools. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Mechanical Engineering, Department of === Graduate
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