COMPASS
The surgical navigation process in minimally-invasive endoscopic surgery is time- and resource- constrained and conventional navigation assistance technology is reduced to a passive-supportive role. In the project COMPASS, a new technology for immersive assistance in minimally-invasive and microscopic interventions is developed to convert navigation systems into fully-acknowledged surgical actors.
Since navigational support functions are influencing factors for the surgeons’ cognitive workload, ICCAS’ research in COMPASS is focused on the investigation of a modeling approach that considers surgical cognition for intelligent navigation assistance.
The modeling approach is based on the situation awareness theory from aeronautics and aerospace research, the cognition-guided surgery paradigm and knowledge from cognitive architectures development for autonomous robotics. The purpose is to extend a navigation assistance system, so that it engages in cooperative interaction with the surgeon. To reduce automation-related drawbacks regarding human-machine-interaction, e.g. decreased situational oversight and limited system predictability, the COMPASS systems processing cycle is intended to mimic the human cognitive information processing to match a simulated navigation behaviour with the real surgeon-individual navigation process. We investigate a dual information processing cycle model that uses both, situation comprehension and cognitive memory processing for the simulation of human-like behaviour. Simulated and real surgical navigation behaviour are then compared to identify potential navigation support, e.g. goal-specific directions or possible work steps.