Paths analysis for a safe forceps blades placement on the BirthSIM simulator

Birth represents for each human being one the most wonderful days of his life but also one of the most dangerous. Being born in safe conditions requires to be surrounded by professionals who acquire a rigorous knowledge of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Nowadays, midwives and obstetricians learn mainly in delivery ward during real childbirths. For difficult childbirths, the use of obstetrical instruments (forceps, spatulas or vacuum extractors) is unavoidable. However, the use of such instruments increases the risks of lesions for the mother and the fetus. In practical, only clinical experience acquired in the delivery ward enables these risks to be reduced. Nowadays, simulators in medicine have a real appeal in the medical environment. These tools enable doctors to visualize the position of the organs in the human body, to plan their movements or to carry out a more complete post operational control. A birth simulator provides a training tool and a research tool to compare various techniques for the use of obstetrical instruments or to validate new methods. It is in this context that we have developed, in collaboration with researchers and medical doctors, a new type of instrumented forceps to offer new solutions for training obstetricians for the safe use of obstetrical forceps delivery. The main contributions of this paper are the design of instrumented forceps coupled with the BirthSIM simulator and the path analysis during the forceps blades placement. This analysis leads to the comparison of the repeatability of the movement between novice obstetricians and expert obstetricians. The results highlight the lack of teaching tool to correctly train the novice obstetricians