Incorporating haptic and olfactory into surgical simulation

Abstract

Recently, surgical simulation is a widely used method to train surgeons on specific surgeries due to the fact that it helps reducing surgical errors. Available surgical simulations lack realism since they only incorporate one or two senses which are vision and hap tic. This paper proposes a novel multimode interactive surgical simulator that incorporates hap tic, olfactory, as well as traditional vision feedback. A scent diffuser was created and developed to interact with the simulation, in order to produce odors when errors took place. Phantom hap tic device was used to provide the sense of touch to the user. Our system has been tested and evaluated and the results show that incorporating more senses to the simulation enhances the performance of the user. This is due to the fact that using olfaction sensation increases the remembrance of the trainee. 2013 IEEE.