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Development of angle information system to facilitate the adjustment of needle-holding posture

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Our purpose is to develop a system based on image processing methods that can inform users of the angular relationship between the needle and the forceps. The user thereby adjusts their needle grasping posture according to the angle information, which leads to an improvement in suturing accuracy.

Methods

The system prototype consists of a camera and an image processing computer. The image captured by the camera is input to the computer, and then, the angular relationship between the forceps and needle is calculated via image processing. Then, the system informs the user of the calculated angular relationship between the needle and forceps in real time. To evaluate whether the system improves suturing accuracy, we invited 12 participants to enroll in an experiment based on a suturing task.

Results

The experimental results illustrate that the system allows participants to easily adjust the positional relationship between the needle and the forceps and that this adjusted angular relationship leads to higher suturing accuracy.

Conclusions

Adjustment to holding the needle at a right angle before insertion has a critical effect on suturing quality. Therefore, we developed a system that informs the user of the angular relationship between the needle and the forceps. The results of the evaluation show that the system significantly improves the suturing accuracy of participants via informing them of the angle.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by a research grant from the JSPS Global COE Program: Global Robot Academia, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research 25220005, Yazaki Memorial Foundation for Science and Technology and the Program for Leading Graduate Schools, “Graduate Program for Embodiment Informatics”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yang Cao & Masaki Seki

  2. Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Li Liu

  3. Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Satoshi Miura & Masakatsu G. Fujie

  4. Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Yo Kobayashi

  5. Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Kazuya Kawamura

Authors
  1. Yang Cao
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  2. Li Liu
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  3. Satoshi Miura
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  4. Masaki Seki
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  5. Yo Kobayashi
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  6. Kazuya Kawamura
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  7. Masakatsu G. Fujie
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yang Cao.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in preparing this article.

Ethical standard

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Cao, Y., Liu, L., Miura, S. et al. Development of angle information system to facilitate the adjustment of needle-holding posture. Int J CARS 12, 2003–2013 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-017-1617-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-017-1617-2

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