This work presents development and testing of two haptic mechanisms to simulate epidural needle insertion procedure.
To configure the force-feedback accuracy, we measured 20 insertions from patients in vivo during a clinical trial. The graphics and forces adapt to the body mass index (BMI) of individual patients.
Two haptic mechanisms were constructed: an electromagnetic haptic device (Fig. 1) and a motor-driven haptic device (Fig. 2). The resulting closed-loop system comprises manikin using four sensors and three force-feedback components which can connect to our developed virtual reality epidural simulator 3D computer graphics [1].
Our literature review identified that 31 epidural simulators have been implemented for clinical practice over the last 30 years either commercially or for research [2].
The purpose of this mechanism is to: (i) connect the manikin device to computer-based virtual reality graphics, (ii) model insertions on various BMIs, (iii) use measured data-driven...
