Assessing Suturing Techniques using a Virtual Reality Simulator

Abstract

A suture assessment virtual reality system for microsurgical trainees was developed to train and assess the suturing skill based on the quality of the virtual sutures. This study uses the simulator to measure and compare the skills of four groups of participants including experienced surgeons and naive subjects. Each subject tried the experiment 30 times using five different types of needles to perform a standardized suture placement task. Traditional metrics of performance as well as new metrics enabled by our system were proposed, and data indicate difference between trained and untrained performance. In all traditional parameters such as time, number of attempts and motion quantity, the medical surgeons outperformed the other three groups, though differences were not significant. However, motion smoothness, penetration and exit angles, tear size areas and orientation change were statistically significant in the trained group compared to untrained group. This suggests that these parameters can be used in virtual microsurgery training.