Hapto-audio-visual environments for collaborative training of ophthalmic surgery over optical network

This paper presents the results of a two-year project to develop a shared hapto-visual-audio-virtual environment (HAVE) with advanced multi-point video conferencing, new display and interface technologies, and distributed latency-compensated haptic technologies for collaborative medical research and training in ophthalmology. One of the goals of this project is to create collaborative training environment, in which residents can remotely learn, in real-time, cataract operations from real operations performed by teaching surgeons. The assumption of this work is that a trainee surgeon can learn the complex hand-eye coordination necessary for becoming a good ophthalmic surgeon by feeling and seeing every move the expert surgeon makes, through a complex haptic, auditory, and visual playback interface. Experimental results are presented