Virtual reality based training to resolve visio-motor conflicts in surgical environments

An issue that complicates movement training, specifically in minimally invasive surgery, is that often there is no one to one correlation between the visual feedback provided on a screen and the movement required to perform the given task. This paper presents a simulator that specifically addresses the intermodal conflict between motor actuation and visual feedback. We developed a virtual reality visio-haptic simulator to assist surgical residents in training to resolve visio-motor conflict. The developed simulator offers individuals the flexibility to train in various scenarios with different levels of visio-motor conflicts. The levels of conflict were simulated by creating a linear functional relation between movement in the real environment and the virtual environment. The haptic rendering was consistent with the visual feedback. Experiments were conducted with expert pediatric surgeons and general surgery residents. Baseline data on performance in conditions of visio-motor conflict were assimilated from expert surgeons. Residents were divided into experimental group that was exposed to visio-motor conflict and the control group which wasnpsilat exposed to visio-motor conflict training. When the performance was compared on a standard surgical suturing task, the residents with inter-modal conflict training performed better than the control group suggesting the construct validity of the training and that visio-motor training can accelerate learning.