Clinical Evaluation of a New Touchless Interface That Uses Hand-Gestures and Voice Operation Named "Opect3D" in Cerebral Blood Vessel Cases

Abstract

Background: In neurovascular therapy, normally surgeons directly instruct a radiologist to operate a computer on their behalf to maintain sterility in the operative field when reconfirming medical images. This process, however, takes time and causes psychological burden.Methods: A touchless interface operated by hand-gestures and voice named "Opect3D" was developed to resolve the above issues. Initially, the Opect3D and conventional verbal communication were compared preclinically. The operation time for deciding the rotation angle and the angular difference against the targeted position were measured and calculated, respectively. Afterwards, Opect3D was utilized in unruptured cerebral aneurysms and the usefulness and psychological burden were surveyed.Results: The mean time using the verbal communication was 24.1 ± 7.9 sec, while using Opect3D was 12.8 ± 5.3 sec per single interaction (p < 0.01). The angular difference using the verbal communication was 9.0 ± 8.4 degrees and 9.4 ± 6.1 degrees using Opect3D (p = 0.87). The survey of usefulness and psychological burden of using Opect3D yielded 4.03 ± 0.73 (p < 0.02) and 4.67 ± 0.54 (p < 0.01), respectively, as a mean value. Scores ranged from 1 (worst) to 5 (best), with 3 corresponding to the verbal communication. Significance was evaluated from the score of 3.Conclusions: Usage of Opect3D was effective in reducing operation time and stress, thus enhancing efficiency and ease of operation.

Keywords

• neurovascular therapy
• three-dimensional
• touchless
• hand-gestures
• voice control