The Integrated Remote Neurosurgical System (IRNS) is a robotic neurosurgical microscope remotely-operated through the utilization of high-speed communications and a surgeon-accessible computer interface. The intended use of this system is for surgical mentoring of a operating-room (OR) surgical team by a remote expert surgeon. In the design of the IRNS, we emphasized trying to give the remote surgeon the feeling of actually being in the OR-a sense of telepresence. This is accomplished through the use of bidirectional audio, video white-boarding on the microscope view, site cameras, voice recognition, bilateral access to the patient's images and an interface to our presurgical planning software. The IRNS also includes several methods to control the remote microscope and its functions, including rotation, translation, focus and zoom. Several safety precautions are implemented including the condition that any remote manipulation of the microscope is possible only when the local operator actively permits it by holding down a "dead-man" switch. The remote and local OR sites are integrated using an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switched network link.

We discuss a two-handed user interface designed to support three-dimesional neurosurgical visualization. By itself, this system is a “point design,” an example of an advanced user interface technique. In this work, we argue that in order to understand why interaction techniques do or do not work, and to suggest possibilities for new techniques, it is important to move beyond point design and to introduce careful scientific measurement of human behavioral principles. In particular, we argue that the common-sense viewpoint that “two hands save time by working in parallel” may not always be an effective way to think about two-handed interface design because the hands do not necessarily work in parallel (there is a structure to two-handed manipulation) and because two hands do more than just save time over one hand (two hands provide the user with more information and can structure how the user thinks about a task). To support these claims, we present an interface design developed in collaboration with neurosurgeons which has undergone extensive informal usability testing, as well as a pair of formal experimental studies which investigate behavioral aspects of two-handed virtual object manipulation. Our hope is that this discussion will help others to apply the lessons in our neurosurgery application to future two-handed user interface designs.

We present an experiment on cooperative bimanual action.Right-handed subjects manipulated a pair of physical objects, a tool and a target object, so that the tool would touch a target on the object @g. 1).For this task, there is a marked specialization of the hands.Performance is best when the left hand orients the target object and the right hand manipulates the tool, but is significantly reduced when these roles are reversed.This suggests that the right hand operates relative to the frame-of-reference of the left hand.Furthermore, when physical constraints guide the tool placement, this fundamentally changes the type of motor control required.The task is tremendously simplified for both hands, and reversing roles of the hands is no longer an important factor.Thus, specialization of the roles of the hands is significant only for skilled manipulation.

We report results from a formal user study of interactive 3D rotation using the mouse-driven Virtual Sphere and Arcball techniques, as well as multidimensional input techniques based on magnetic orientation sensors. Multidimensional input is often assumed to allow users to work quickly, but at the cost of precision, due to the instability of the hand moving in the open air. We show that, at least for the orientation matching task used in this experiment, users can take advantage of the integrated degrees of freedom provided by multidimensional input without necessarily sacrificing precision: using multidimensional input, users completed the experimental task up to 36% faster without any statistically detectable loss of accuracy. We also report detailed observations of common usability problems when first encountering the techniques. Our observations suggest some design issues for 3D input devices. For example, the physical form-factors of the 3D input device significantly influenced us...

Article Passive real-world interface props for neurosurgical visualization Share on Authors: Ken Hinckley University of Virginia, Departments of Neurosurgery and Computer Science University of Virginia, Departments of Neurosurgery and Computer ScienceView Profile , Randy Pausch University of Virginia, University of Virginia, Computer Science University of Virginia, University of Virginia, Computer ScienceView Profile , John C. Goble University of Virginia, Departments of Neurosurgery University of Virginia, Departments of NeurosurgeryView Profile , Neal F. Kassell University of Virginia, Departments of Neurosurgery University of Virginia, Departments of NeurosurgeryView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '94: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsApril 1994 Pages 452–458https://doi.org/10.1145/191666.191821Online:24 April 1994Publication History 192citation2,131DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations192Total Downloads2,131Last 12 Months132Last 6 weeks12 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

We present a survey of design issues for developing effective free-space three-dimensional (3D) user interfaces. Our survey is based upon previous work in 3D interaction, our experience in developing free-space interfaces, and our informal observations of test users. We illustrate our design issues using examples drawn from instances of 3D interfaces. For example, our first issue suggests that users have difficulty understanding three-dimensional space. We offer a set of strategies which may help users to better perceive a 3D virtual environment, including the use of spatial references, relative gesture, two-handed interaction, multisensory feedback, physical constraints, and head tracking. We describe interfaces which employ these strategies. Our major contribution is the synthesis of many scattered results, observations, and examples into a common framework. This framework should serve as a guide to researchers or systems builders who may not be familiar with design issues in spatial input. Where appropriate, we also try to identify areas in free-space 3D interaction which we see as likely candidates for additional research. An extended and annotated version of the references list for this paper is available on-line through mosaic at address