Vibro-Band: Supporting Needle Placement for Physicians with Vibrations

Medical images and navigation systems support physicians during needle-based interventions. As the information is primarily displayed on monitors, the physician's attention is drawn away from the patient's body. To address this issue, we explore the additional use of a vibration wristband that directs the movements for needle-based operations via different vibration patterns on the operator's arm. We conducted a first user study comparing the combination of tactile and visual guidance versus visual-only feedback with 12 participants to investigate the general feasibility. Our results show that task times, usability scores, cognitive load, and accuracy are comparable for both conditions suggesting that vibration feedback is generally suitable for medical navigation tasks and warranting further iteration and research in this direction.