Evaluation of Fatigue Attributed to Binocular Stereopsis on Surgical Tasks with a Stereoscopic Endoscope

Abstract

For medical stereoscopic imaging, the usefulness of the presentation of depth information and the issues of picture quality and fatigue have been discussed. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of binocular stereopsis on surgeon's fatigue by subjective and psychophysiological scores.
14 subjests were asked to perform three kinds of tasks-a pegboard, incision, and suturing-under the 2D and 3D conditions conducted for one hour in total. We evaluated the degree of fatigue by a questionnaire (Subjective Symptom Test of Fatigue) and by the critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) test. In the flicker test, eyestrain due to the tasks was not observed under either 2D or 3D display conditions. Although subjective fatigues of muscles and eyes were significant, no difference was found depending on the display conditions. CFF did not show any evidence of fatigue caused by the binocular stereopsis.