A hands-free device to point the operator's intention on the monitor during endoscopic surgery

Abstract

In endoscopic surgery, there is a problem that it is hard for the surgeons to carry out the work indication of verbal because they cannot use their hands for doing indication during surgery. To solve the problem, we developed the hands-free pointing device using an acceleration sensor and a gyroscope sensor. This device is able to point to the location in the monitor without hands. In this system, the operator can move the pointer in the monitor to tilt the neck. In this study, we evaluated that this system has the good performance for the pointing ability of the moving time by doing the verification experiments and that this system has a high potential as the hands-free pointing system in endoscopic surgery.