|
The Haptic Workbench
Haptics: (pronounced HAP-tiks) is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with computer applications. The science concerned with the "tactile sense".
What is the Challenge? (The Need)
"...In a human-computer haptic system, the human is the part of the system that finds the significant patterns; the haptic part translates invisible forces to human-sensible form."
-- From Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold, Simon & Schuster, 1991, pp. 27-28. "We need to use simulation in the medical environment to improve, define and develop surgical skills in order to improve the quality and safety of surgical services".
-- Dr. Bruce Barraclough, President, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons
The science of Haptics is quickly maturing and proving itself as an invaluable tool in our interaction with "virtual" environments. Early examples allowed pilots to practice flying a Boeing 747 and "feeling" the weight of the controls before flying the real thing. This has saved billions worth of "virtually" crashed aircraft, and now, the science behind haptics is reaching a level of maturity to recreate the "feel" of soft tissues and allow doctors the chance to practice before operating on the real thing.
Thus, one of the immediate applications of Haptics involves complex medical surgeries. For example, a recent demonstration showed how two surgeons in separate locations could plan and rehearse surgical procedures within a shared virtual environment.
In this demonstration, a 'surgeon' in Australia guided a 'trainee' in Sweden to perform a simulated cholecystectomy - an operation to remove the gall bladder - using a link between Canberra, Australia and Stockholm, Sweden. The computerised link allowed the trainee to feel the instructor guiding his hand around the scene - even though they were on opposite sides of the world. They could also feel, stretch and manipulate a simulated gallbladder, liver, and bile duct, while guiding each other's hands as though they were in the same operating theatre.
The development of collaborative virtual environments is part of the tele-health initiative in the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CeNTIE). Future medical applications could range from everyday consulting to responding to crisis situations.
How Can NGI Help? (The Use)
The surgical haptics demonstration was performed over an Internet connection that physically travelled at least 22,000km across two oceans and one continent.
Because 3D objects require a large amount of bandwidth, the team at CSIRO needed the help of a telecommunications team, which were developing a 10 Gibabit/sec Ethernet. For the test a taste of reality, Agilent Technologies generated simulation traffic over the connection to simulate normal traffic loads. Dr Economou (CSIRO chief technologist) explained, "The performance of the haptic system and studio quality video were perfectly preserved despite the system being over-loaded with other traffic." Duncan Stevens (CSIRO research group leader) continued, "We were able to flood the network with traffic in an attempt to push the demonstration out. The haptic requires a millisecond refresh rate, so if there was a lag there would be problems."
(http://www.idm.net.au/storypages/storyimaging-f.asp?id=2906)
The bandwidth and latency requirements of Haptics systems limit their use today. Under the current constraints, tools like these will be limited to low-level training exercises or consultations prior to the actual surgeries. However, NGI could change this by removing the communication constraints. The result would allow the required high quality of imaging and tactile feedback that may eventually make remote surgery - such as the 2001 remote gallbladder operation performed in France, by doctors in New York - a common occurrence.
The Bottom Line (The Value)
The first remote surgery in 2001 cost around US$1 million (a normal gallbladder operation is valued at US$2,000) and most of that cost was associated with the 55 minutes of network time - with the required high bandwidth and extremely low latency (network response time).
(www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,35201,00.html)
Bandwidth costs have plunged since 2001, and today, NGI plans to create a network of high-speed, low latency connections that will make applications, such as remote surgery, a commercially viable alternative to current surgical theatres.
One day, surgery theatres with "three robotic arms in the operating room - one holding an endoscopic camera, two others controlling the movements of tiny surgical instruments inside the patient" (www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,35201,00.html) may be a common sight.
Currently, surgeons are, and will be, required at most hospitals in New Zealand, but complex emergency surgeries requiring specialist surgeons require the patient to be transferred to tertiary hospitals, taking valuable time that is often fatal to the patient. In these cases, remote surgical capability will save lives, and money (costs include emergency helicopter transfers, higher chances of complications and their associated costs, and in cases of nerve/brain damage - a preventable burden on society that will last a lifetime).
The ACC Rehabilitation Benefits ($865M) and Compensation Benefits ($714M) together amount to over NZ$1.5 billion per year (ACC 2002 Annual Report). If prompt expert remote haptic surgeries could offset even 1% of those ongoing costs, it would save over NZ$15 million per year in ACC payments alone. This does not take into account the organisational economies-of-scale that could be enjoyed by bringing specialists into a single location that could easily match the ACC savings. Under this scenario, a crack team of surgeons could perform their services from the comfort of their own labs on patients located anywhere that the NGI pipe can reach.
|
|
