Objective assessment of bimanual laparoscopic surgical skills via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)
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Authors
Nemani, Arun
Issue Date
2017-12
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Biomedical engineering
Alternative Title
Abstract
Surgical simulators are effective methods for training and assessing surgical technical skills, particularly those that are bimanual. These simulators are now ubiquitous in surgical training and assessment programs for residents. Simulators are used in programs such as the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) and Fundamentals of Endoscopic Surgery (FES), which are pre-requisites for Board certification in general surgery. Although these surgical simulators have been validated for clinical use, they have significant limitations, such as subjectivity in assessment metrics, poor correlation of transfer from simulation to clinically relevant environments, poor correlation of task performance scores to learning motor skill levels, and ultimately inconsistent reliability of these assessment methods as an indicator of positive patient outcomes. These limitations present an opportunity for more objective and analytical approaches to assess surgical motor skills. To address these surgical skill assessment limitations, we present functional near-infrared spectroscopic (fNIRS), a non-invasive brain imaging method, to objectively differentiate and classify subjects with varying degrees of laparoscopic surgical motor skill levels based on measurements of functional activation changes.
Description
December 2017
School of Engineering
School of Engineering
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY