Usability Evaluation of Wide-Angle Arthroscope and Development of Region of Interest Selection Interface

Abstract

The aim of study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a wide-angle arthroscope by comparison with a conven-tional arthroscope, and to propose a region of interest (ROI) selection interface which is enable solo surgery without assistants. The usability of wide-angle arthroscope was validated by comparing the scope handling performance between the 150 degree wide-angle arthroscope and 105 degree existing arthroscope when twelve participants with no experience of arthroscopic surgery performed the four shoulder arthroscopic simulation tasks in phantom mode. Four evaluation criteria for assessing the performance were (1) the time taken, (2) total trajectory length scope moved, (3) number of scope handing movements, (4) average acceleration. Experi-mental results support that the value of evaluation criteria was statistically lower when participants used the wide-angle arthroscope. The ROI selection interface simultaneously shows a wide-angle view and magnified ROI view which is required due to the small size of ROI in the wide-angle arthroscopic view, and an operating surgeon can select the ROI position without any assistants. We propose to use a surgical instrument itself for the selection of ROI position. For that purpose, a camera was affixed to the surgical instrument, and rotational movement of the instrument was analyzed by image processing. AKAZE algorithm was utilized for a feature extraction, and essential matrix acquired from matched features was decomposed into rotation angle. We test-ed a resolution of ROI selection which satisfied the accuracy up to 48 (6x8) division regions (quantitative as-sessment) and obtained the surgeon’s feedback that the interface facilitated the solo surgery (qualitative as-sessment). This study shows a new approach to evaluate the usefulness of wide-angle view in surgical situation using a motion analysis system, and the ROI selection interface is expected to have a great significance for future clinical use of a wide-angle endoscopic system. ⓒ 2015 DGIST