The state off 3-D technology and evaluation

Abstract

In recent years the application of 3-D video endoscopic systems in clinical use especially in the field of laparoscopic surgery has increased steadily. Compared to the number of established traditional 2-D video endoscopic systems, the number of 3-D video endoscopic systems used in the operating theatre today is obviously lower. This slow application can be mainly explained by the lack of evaluation of these new technologies concerning their influence on the surgical procedure and on patient benefit as well as by the need for specific economic analysis. The starting point for our investigations was to analyse the influence of 3-D video endoscopy on endoscopically guided manipulations in general. In order to achieve quantitative statements we performed laboratory experiments using human factor analysing methods. In the next step we performed clinical field studies of the application of 3-D video endoscopic systems for a side-by-side comparison of 2-D and 3-D systems. These studies showed that the use of 3-D video endoscopy has an improving influence on endoscopically guided surgical manipulations as well as on the intraoperative procedures. We also found that spatial visual perception of stereoscopic images of 3-D video systems may cause problems for some users. For the validation of stereoscopic visualization systems, we additionally studied the influence of isolated technical, optical and physiological parameters on visual perception as well as on the transposition into visually guided manipulations. Detailed results of these investigations concerning the influence of 3-D video endoscopy on binocular perception are presented.