LAPAROSCOPIC SURGERY TRAINING SIMULATOR

Laparoscopic Surgery has become a popular surgical tool in the hands of surgeons. These procedures are often referred as key hole operations and require only very small incisions. Therefore such procedures can minimize blood loss and avoid traumatic injuries. However, specialised training is required to perfect such techniques. There is no effective method of training surgeons in this procedure except that they practice on patients gradually. As a result of this developed countries are trying to give training for surgeons using Virtual Reality Technology using simulatos.

Hence a project was taken up with IRIS (CAIR) and BEST for indigenous development of a 4 degree of freedom position sensing mechanism. This mechanism is used to obtain positional feedback in 4 degrees of freedom manipulation by the operator (doctor) being trained. A prototype simulator has been developed for use in conjunction with the position device enabling training of laparoscopic surgeons in hand-eye co-ordination.

The module was extensively tested at BEST based on valuable inputs from international laparoscopic surgeons for the enhancement of its performance for rendering it as a viable training and assistance device. It was felt that there is a need for graphics to be as realistic as possible for trainees to be immersed in the simulation and the actual anatomy has to be simulated to be acquainted thoroughly. The TASK based training seem to be effective to attain the psycho motor skills, but procedure based training also has to be incorporated for the trainees to attain the required confidence level. A thorough investigation of the surgery procedures have to be carried out to design various scenarios. Therefore there was a need to develop an improved version of the laparoscopic surgery simulator. Improved version of simulator is now ready and undergoing evaluation at various hospitals in the country.

Technology is now available for transfer to interested parties for commercial exploitation.