EndoTower™
Download EndoTower Product Video (39.2 MB Windows Media)
Download EndoTower Brochure (238 KB PDF)
The EndoTower surgical simulator uses a digital virtual environment to provide instruction in surgical navigation using an angled laparoscopic lens / camera combination. These navigational skills are important for the millions of minimally invasive surgical operations performed worldwide annually for general surgery, orthopedics, urology, gynecologic surgery, and thoracic surgery. Proper manipulation of the angled laparoscope in the complex 3D environment of the human body is critical to the operation. EndoTower is designed for doctors, nurses, residents, physician's assistants, OR technicians, and students. The camera driving skill is essential and arguably the most basic yet critical skill for video-assisted procedures.
EndoTower is designed around functional realism, meaning that there is high accuracy with regard to simulating an actual 30, 45, or 70-degree laparoscope. A collaborative study with Dr. Richard Satava and Dr. Tony Gallagher has shown that EndoTower performance correlates with inherent visuospatial and perceptual abilities. Validation work for Endotower is ongoing.
The task for the EndoTower trainer entails identifying randomly placed arrows in the virtual EndoTower. The EndoTower is a three-dimensional (3D) tower with cylindrical holes within its various arms. The EndoTower provides a relatively complex 3D structure for exploration with the virtual angled lens. In the simulator, 3D arrows with varying directional orientations are randomly placed around the tower and inside the cylindrical cut-outs. Arrows were chosen as the targets so users would be required to maintain right-side-up orientation in order to properly identify them.
EndoTower records metrics such as the time it takes to find all the arrows, number of redouts (i.e. when the lens touches the tower and gets smudged with virtual blood), percentage of time the camera is off of level orientation, and total length of the path the user followed while searching for the arrows.
