REAL-TIME VISUALISATION AND ANALYSIS OF TACTILE INFORMATION USING FORCE SENSORS DURING ARTERIAL THREADING

Despite the investment in procedure-based simulators in endovascular training programmes, there is a growing concern over the lack of effective haptic feedback, which means that trainees must rely on live practice to develop skills and knowledge of the tactile aspect of Mechanical Thrombectomy. The live procedure carries a significant risk to patients, and the opportunity to carry it out is often limited, which can delay the trainee's development. This research presents a novel tactile controller designed to simulate the physical characteristics of arterial threading for mechanical thrombectomy to assess the efficacy of haptic feedback information generated using force-sensing resistors and game-engine technology for simulating and recording arterial threading. The experimental work was performed in a Virtual Learning Environment to evaluate the effectiveness of the force-sensing box trainer in simulating the physical resistance of an artery in mechanical thrombectomy. The generated force data is presented to a user in a real-time virtual operation theatre indicating the level of applied force. This work demonstrated the successful integration of force-sensor data into a Virtual Learning Environment inside the Unreal Engine. The data can be exported for further analysis by the end-users after completing the simulation to investigate the user’s performance. Analysis of the obtained experimental data from the real-time simulation study demonstrated the ability of the system to identify changes to applied force and impacts generated by a user in a real-time simulation using force-sensitive data for simulated arterial threading, indicating the level of applied force exhibited by the user. Supervising practitioners can use the experimental data to determine the number of impacts and force applied during a simulation.