Positioning Tasks in Multimodal Computer-Navigated Surgery

We present conTACT, a new concept for assisting in surgical interventions via 3D multimodal computer-navigated surgery. In contrast to conventional computer-navigated surgery, our system explicitly processes and uses information about the surgeon to augment human-machine interaction. We also evaluate humans' neuroscientific behavior and show how we can transfer 3D navigation information via tactile signals delivered to the hand surface.

Concept

As you can see in the “State of the Art” sidebar (page 44), several researchers have developed navigation systems for computer-aided surgery-and there's a lot of work regarding tactile displays to help the medical field. But most of the work involving tactile displays focuses on helping the patient with movement or helping students and young surgeons practice surgery. Currently, tactile displays haven't been fully integrated into the actual computer-navigated surgery process.