Adding Safety Rules to Surgeon-Authored VR Training

TL;DR

This paper introduces safety rule integration and a snapshot feedback mechanism in VR surgical training, enhancing trainee understanding and acceptance, with field testing showing improved learner perception.

Contribution

It presents a novel safety rule and snapshot feedback system in surgeon-authored VR training modules, evaluated through field testing at surgical conferences.

Findings

Improved learner perception of force understanding after snapshot addition

Stable overall ratings of TIPS usability

Enhanced acceptance of safety features in VR training

Abstract

Introduction: Safety criteria in surgical VR training are typically hard-coded and informally summarized. The Virtual Reality (VR) content creation interface, TIPS-author, for the Toolkit for Illustration of Procedures in Surgery (TIPS) allows surgeon-educators (SEs) to create laparoscopic VR-training modules with force feedback. TIPS-author initializes anatomy shape and physical properties selected by the SE accessing a cloud data base of physics-enabled pieces of anatomy. Methods: A new addition to TIPS-author are safety rules that are set by the SE and are automatically monitored during simulation. Errors are recorded as visual snapshots for feedback to the trainee. This paper reports on the implementation and opportunistic evaluation of the snap-shot mechanism as a trainee feedback mechanism. TIPS was field tested at two surgical conferences, one before and one after adding the snapshot feature. Results: While other ratings of TIPS remained unchanged for an overall Likert scale score of 5.24 out of 7 (7 equals very useful), the rating of the statement `The TIPS interface helps learners understand the force necessary to explore the anatomy' improved from 5.04 to 5.35 out of 7 after the snapshot mechanism was added. Conclusions: The ratings indicate the viability of the TIPS open-source2 E-authored surgical training units. Presenting SE-determined procedural missteps via the snapshot mechanism at the end of the training increases acceptance