ROVIMAS: a software package for assessing surgical skills using the da Vinci telemanipulator system

Technical ability is an important factor of overall competence in surgery. The use of new technology and the introduction of robotic surgical manipulators in general endoscopic surgery has resulted in the potential for improved surgical performance. Use of this technology, however, raises the issue of objective assessment of surgical skill in a new context. This paper presents a software package called ROVIMAS (RObotics VIdeo & Motion Assessment Software) which allows the objective evaluation of surgical skills using the da Vinci™ Telemanipulation system. It analyses real-time kinematic data of the master arms streamed from the da Vinci™ system and displays distance and velocity graphs calculated from the robotic positional data. Additional functionality of the package includes trajectory analysis of the master arms, low-pass filtering, statistical results and zoom-in of specific movement patterns. ROVIMAS has already been successfully used in a number of research studies carried out in our department to assess the learning curve of simulated surgical tasks as well as dexterity enhancement and the advantages of 3D vision in robotic surgery.