Touchless Measurement of Medical Image Data for Interventional Support

Abstract

The preservation of sterility is essential during interventions. Based on interviews with physicians and observed interventions, we derive requirements for touchless distances measurements. We present interaction techniques to apply these measurements on medical 2D image data and 3D planning models using the Leap Motion Controller. A comparative user study with three medical students and eleven non-medical participants was conducted, comparing freehand gesture control with the established, but non-sterile mouse and keyboard control. We assessed the time, accuracy and usability during 2D and 3D distance measurement tasks. The freehand gesture control performed worse compared to mouse and keyboard control. However, we observed a fast learning curve leading to a strong improvement for the gesture control, indicating that longer training times could make this input modality competitive. We discuss whether the advantage of sterility of gesture control can compensate for its inferior performance.