Overview
The Clinical Skills testbed is an experimental testbed that extends our previous work on simulators that incorporate haptic devices to teach surgical skills. These devices are highly sensitive to network latency and jitter. The testbed included further development of the SPRING surgical simulation application. This application provides a multi-user, interactive, soft-tissue model of anatomy, together with learner-controllable models of surgical tools with haptic feedback. SPRING was made available open-source to the research community through the SourceForge website. It is being used as the core engine in a variety of simulators.
This testbed also includes new development of a Remote Tactile Sensor, capable of allowing a remote user to feel simulated or actual lesions as though palpating with a fingertip. This testbed has generated insight into needed theories and research for systmes that incorporate haptics, the uses of haptics within surgical simulation and surgical training, and the technological and network requirements of these systems. We have further investigated the abilities of subjects to evaluate tissue stiffness by probing, and have compared the subjects to distinguish surfaces of different stiffness using both a physical durometer and a virtual simulacrum.
Another activity was high quality transmission of live video. This was used in a demonstration of real-time high-resolution video transmission of a live surgical procedure, with expert commentary, from the Stanford Hospital, to a group of surgical residents in Sydney, Australia. Similar live multi-site events have been conducted with other sites.
