Visual Search Behaviour and Analysis of Augmented Visualisation for Minimally Invasive Surgery

摘要

Disorientation has been one of the key issues hampering natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) adoption. A new Dynamic View Expansion (DVE) technique was recently introduced as a method to increase the field-of-view, as well as to provide temporal visual cues to encode the camera motion trajectory. This paper presents a systematic analysis of visual search behaviour during the use of DVE for NOTES navigation. The study compares spatial orientation and latency with and without the use of the new DVE technique with motion trajectory encoding. Eye tracking data was recorded and modelled using Markov chains to characterise the visual search behaviour, where a new region of interest (ROI) definition was used to determine the states in the transition graphs. Resultant state transition graphs formed from the participants' eye movements showed a marked difference in visual search behaviour with increased cross-referencing between grey and less grey regions. The results demonstrate the advantages of using motion trajectory encoding for DVE.