System identification and simulation of soft tissue force feedback in a spine surgical simulator

Harriet Violet Chorney; James Richard Forbes; Mark Driscoll

doi:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107267

System identification and simulation of soft tissue force feedback in a spine surgical simulator

Comput Biol Med. 2023 Sep:164:107267. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107267. Epub 2023 Jul 18.

Authors

Harriet Violet Chorney¹, James Richard Forbes², Mark Driscoll³

Affiliations

¹ The Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research (MBR) Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Orthopaedic Research Laboratory (ORL), Research Institute MUHC, Montreal General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; The Dynamics, Estimation, and Control in Aerospace and Robotics (DECAR) Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
² The Dynamics, Estimation, and Control in Aerospace and Robotics (DECAR) Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
³ The Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research (MBR) Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Orthopaedic Research Laboratory (ORL), Research Institute MUHC, Montreal General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: mark.driscoll@mcgill.ca.

PMID: 37536093
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107267

Abstract

Surgical simulators are being introduced as training modalities for surgeons. This paper aims to evaluate dynamic models used to convey force feedback from puncturing the soft tissue during a spine surgical simulation. The force feedback of the tissue is treated as a dynamic system. This is done by performing classical system identification across a bandwidth of frequencies on a tissue analogue and fitting that behaviour to dynamic viscoelastic models. The models that are tested are an inverted linear model, the Maxwell model, the Kelvin-Boltzmann (KB) model, and a higher-order blackbox (HO) model. Several error metrics such as percent variance accounted for (%VAF) are determined to measure solution accuracy. The force feedback models are programmed into a surgical simulator and tested with study participants who rated them based on how well the identified models match the behaviour of the rubber tissue analogue. The highest %VAF is 82.64% when the tissue is modelled as the HO model. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) are found between all model ratings from participants except between the HO model and the KB model. However, the HO model has the highest percentage (37.8%) of participants who rank its performance as the closest to the tissue analogue compared to the other force feedback models. The more accurately the dynamic behaviour resembles the tissue analogue, the higher the model was rated by study participants. This study highlights the importance of utilizing dynamic signals to generate dynamic models of soft tissue for spine surgical simulators.

Keywords: Force feedback; Modelling; Surgical simulation; System identification; Viscoelasticity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Computer Simulation
Feedback
Humans
Surgeons*