Virtual Reality for User-Centered Design and Evaluation of Touch-free Interaction Techniques for Navigating Medical Images in the Operating Room

Computer-assisted surgery has pervaded the operating room (OR). While display and imaging technologies advance rapidly, keyboard and mouse are still the dominant input devices, even though they cause sterility problems. We present an interactive virtual operating room (IVOR), intended as a tool to develop and study interaction methods for the OR, and two novel touch-free interaction techniques using hand and foot gestures. All was developed and evaluated with 20 surgeons. The results show that our techniques can be used with minimal learning time and no significant differences regarding completion time and usability compared to the control condition relying on verbal instruction of an assistant. Furthermore, IVOR as a tool was well received by the surgeons, although they had no prior experience with virtual reality. This confirms IVOR is an effective tool for user-centered design and evaluation, providing a portable, yet realistic substitution for a real OR for early evaluations.