Séminaire : The sense and nonsense of simulation in the context of surgery

Heiko Hecht, professeur à l'Université de Mainz en Allemagne, fera une présentation de ses travaux de recherche le jeudi 26 Mars 2015 à 14h00 dans l'amphithéâtre L. Hirsch à l'IRCAD.

Équipe : AVR et MMB

Titre : The sense and nonsense of simulation in the context of surgery

Résumé : Surgeons need to acquire sophisticated spatial representations of the three-dimensional (3-D) layout of surgery sites. To what extent do computer simulations facilitate the acquisition of such representations? I will report two experiments, one investigating the usefulness of 3-D visualization and one investigating knowledge acquisition when learning to tie knots with a laparoscopic simulator. In the first experiment, we asked medical students and expert surgeons to reconstruct a spatial arrangement of objects that they had learnt under three conditions: direct viewing, viewing a sequence of MRI scans, and watching a 3-D visualization of the MRI scans. Both groups performed best in the direct viewing conditions, however, experts did not benefit from the 3-D visualization whereas novices did. In the second experiment, we asked medical students to tie intra-corporeal knots using a laparoscopic nissen fundoplication model. Two groups performed two training sessions. The experimental group completed additional mental practice during the interval between the two training sessions. All performed a cube rotation subtest of a standard intelligence test (I-S-T 2000 r) to evaluate visual-spatial ability. Spatial intelligence correlated with performance, however, mental practice did not produce an advantage at this skill level. Implications for simulation in the context of surgery will be discussed.

Bio : Heiko HECHT is Full Professor of General Psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz (Germany), with a specialty in Human Experimental Psychology. His research interests are focused on Perception, Action, Virtual Reality, Man-Machine Interaction, and Intuitive Physics. After graduating in Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Trier (Germany) and the University of Virginia (USA), he earned a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Virginia (USA). Subsequently, he was a employed as a Research Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California (USA) and at the Aeronautics-Astronautics Department of the Man-Vehicle Laboratory of the MIT (USA). Heiko HECHT has authored more than 120 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals and acts on Editorial and Reviewing Boards of several major science journals in his field.