A Virtual Repository of Neurosurgical Instrumentation for Neuro-engineering Research and Collaboration.

BACKGROUND: The advancements in microscopy and more recently in neuro-endoscopy, have revolutionized the field of neurosurgery. Hand-held neurosurgical instruments are integral components of these procedures. However, these instruments have many limitations such as deprived ergonomics, constrained maneuverability and limited degrees of freedom. Hence, a need for developing better instruments is commonly felt by neurosurgeons. Also, the focus of modern neurosurgical training is now shifting towards simulation models. The baseline data of surgical instruments play a vital role in the development of virtual and physical simulators. A primary factor impeding development of novel instruments and simulators is the lack of comprehensive surgical instrument database.

OBJECTIVE: The development, need analysis and validation of a virtual repository of microscopic and neuro-endoscopic instruments.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The standard neurosurgical instrument sets were scanned, reverse engineered and stored in various file formats at the file transfer protocol (FTP) server. The developed database was validated by four groups of experts by creating different neurosurgery applications.

RESULTS: Four groups of experts used the content of repository to create novel ergonomic instrument designs, e-learning material, computer vision based surgical skills evaluation and virtual reality and validated the contents. The validation results showed that quality of content (75%), usefulness of content (85.6%) and time-saving using content (88.1%) received high scores and the virtual repository contents were appreciated for its effectiveness.

CONCLUSION: The virtual database is an efficient starting aid to foster research collaborations related to neurosurgical instruments and surgical simulation platforms.