Feasibility of team training in virtual reality for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery

The rate of evolution of surgical robotics has continuously increased since its inception. Training and experience with the robots is a key factor to successful operations but training is time-consuming and expensive, as the equipment used is expensive and has a short life-time. To explore the possibility of enabling alternative training methods for robot assisted surgery, we designed a multi-user virtual reality simulation of team training as practised in certified institutes and conducted an expert review in cooperation with a training centre for minimally invasive surgery, first nurse assistant and nurse specialist in robot surgery Jane Petersson and head surgeon at Aalborg University Hospital Johan Poulsen. To this end, a contextual study was conducted to ensure realism and accuracy of the simulation. The experts were positive about the system’s future, however it was not considered sufficiently complete for use in actual surgery training at this stage. More scenarios and features would be required in future implementations to allow for near full training sessions to be performed in virtual reality.