A Smart Haptic Hand-Held Device for Neurosurgical Microdissection

Microneurosurgery requires dexterity, precision and delicate force application in order to be carried out safely and effectively. Neurosurgeons must apply sufficient force in order to carry out microsurgical procedures effectively but not excessive force such that iatrogenic injury occurs. This paper presents a smart hand-held microsurgical instrument that indicates to the surgeon when a force-threshold has been exceeded by providing vibrotactile feedback. Many existing haptic-feedback systems, particularly master–slave robotic platforms, are large, highly complex, and costly. By comparison, the proposed device is compact, fail-safe and low cost. Two psychophysical user studies were carried out to assess the proposed vibrotactile force-threshold feedback system. A cadaveric pilot study was carried out to evaluate the device in a microdissection task. In all the studies performed, the haptic dissector device has shown to be effective in providing real-time feedback in terms of force application during microsurgical tasks.