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Session: Poster session II
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 16:00

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Chunman Fan ()
Filip Jelinek ()
Dimitra Dodou ()
Paul Breedveld ()

Abstract:
In the last decade, with a minimal access approach, experimental surgical procedures are carried out through natural openings in the human body by following 3D anatomical pathways (such as NOTES: Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery). In this type of surgery, the instrument manipulation is limited because the incision point reduces the instrument’s Degrees of Freedom (DOFs) and the anatomical pathway restricts the instrument’s motion. The ideal surgical instruments for pathway surgery should thus have full manoeuvrability to approach a target which locates either along the pathway or at the end of the pathway. Surgical instruments with a manoeuvrable tip, in which the tip may be consist of single or multiple steering segments, are under development. However, few knowledge is known about manual control skills for steerable surgical instruments, and it is unclear which control method is more intuitive for a dexterous performance. We developed a simulator device, called the Endo-PathController, to investigate manual control skills for steerable MIS instruments. The Endo-PathController consists of a mechanism that mimics the shaft and handle of a steerable surgical instrument with standard dimensions, and is electronically connected to a laptop computer by a USB data acquisition unit LabJack-U3 (LabJack Corporation, U.S.). Endo-PathController measures manual control motions in 5DOFs: 2DOFs rotation at the instrument incision point (left/right ±90°; up/down 0-60°), 2DOFs rotation at the instrument steering unit (up/down and left/right, ±40°) and 1DOF shaft translation along its axis (0-100mm). Endo-PathController has the standard surgical instrument dimension, and can accommodate various control methods (such as, thumb control or wrist control). A custom designed software was employed for simulating the tip steering and evaluating the control skills. A pilot-test of Endo-PathController in order to investigate two control methods (thumb control and wrist control) for tip orientation in a computer animated tasks will be carried out. The participants will be asked to guide the Endo-PathController towards a target locating at the end of an animated curved tunnel without any collision. The participants are divided into two groups with opposite control-method usage sequence. The assessment of performance will be evaluated by means of the recorded task execution time, motion trajectories and mental load test results (TLX: the NASA Task Load Index) .