Quantification of microsurgical tactile perception

Abstract

Microsurgery involves the manipulation of delicate membranes and vessels with a required accuracy often on the order of tens of microns, a scale at or near the limit of human positional ability. In addition, forces imposed by the tissue on the surgical tool during these manipulations are exceedingly small. Manual tasks performed using visual feedback alone (i.e., without tactile sensation) have been shown to take longer and be less accurate than tasks performed utilizing both visual and tactile information. Here we validate the hypothesis that retinal surgery is primarily vision based by measuring the magnitude of forces generated during simulated retinal surgery in cadaveric porcine eyes and comparing the results with the magnitude of forces discernable by retinal surgeons. Our goal is to improve microsurgical performance by developing robotic augmentation devices capable of enhancing the surgeon's ability to both position surgical tools and sense the surgical environment. The results of this study are an important guideline for such systems currently under development.