Dr. Marcia O’Malley 

Rice University

Talk Title:

Guiding with Touch: Objective assessment and haptic cueing to improve surgical performance on virtual and robotic platforms

Date:

25th April, 2022

Time:

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Abstract:

Recent advances in simulation and robotic surgery have changed the way surgeons are trained in terms of their ability to gain experience without risk to patients. However, the feedback surgical trainees receive is still delayed, subjective, and qualitative, which does not provide the maximum support for rapid acquisition of motor skill. In this talk, I will describe our research on identifying objective and quantitative metrics that capture surgical skill in the endovascular domain. Specifically, we have shown that low-level properties of movements (e.g., smoothness) made in the performance of several motor tasks—including surgery in both virtual and robotic environments—are highly correlated with high-level performance outcomes, such as expert evaluations in surgical environments. I will also describe our progress in transforming these performance metrics to haptic representations to a trainee. We hypothesize that it may be possible to enhance surgical performance and training by providing performance feedback based on these same motion-based metrics that quantify movement quality and strategies rather than task outcomes. This approach will allow trainees to receive feedback that is immediate and quantitative, which should amplify human capabilities and result in improved performance in difficult-to-train motor domains such as surgery..

Biography:

Marcia O’Malley is the Thomas Michael Panos Family Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University. Her research addresses issues that arise when humans physically interact with robotic systems, with a focus on training and rehabilitation in virtual environments. She has twice received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University. O’Malley was a recipient of both the ONR Young Investigator award and the NSF CAREER Award. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering. She currently serves as associate editor-in-chief for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Conference Editorial Board.