From The Theme
ONTOLOGIES FOR THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF LEARNING

WHAT IF
What if we could develop an ontology for learning a surgical training process and could use machine learning to facilitate the development of that ontology?

WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO
The most common implementation and use of an ontology in surgery is the use of standardized checklists. When evaluating surgical performance and learning, checklists enable structured feedback and a standardized approach to communicating the most important learning points within a surgical procedure.

We focused on the development of an ontology for human motion and psychomotor performance in surgical training, and we explored machine learning to facilitate the development of that ontology.

WHAT WE FOUND
We developed an ontology of the bowel repair through annotating videos and defining surgical actions and sub-actions. In our ontology development process using AI, we implemented a state of the art object detection algorithm called ‘You Only Look Once – Version 3’. This algorithm is capable of localizing and identifying objects (e.g., Hand, Tissue, Tool). The findings illustrated that hands-on visualization techniques can be identified automatically using Artificial Intelligence. AI helped to segment a large dataset into visualization components for our ontology development.

LEARN MORE
mediaX Research Update Fall 2020

Watch Carla’s Presentation, Quantitative Predecessors to Human Actions

PEOPLE BEHIND THE PROJECT
Carla Pugh is Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement (T.E.C.I.) Center. Her clinical area of expertise is Acute Care Surgery. She is the first surgeon in the United States to obtain a PhD in Education. Her goal is to use technology to change the face of medical and surgical education. Her research involves the use of simulation and advanced engineering technologies to develop new approaches for assessing and defining competency in clinical procedural skills.

Hossein Mohamadipanah is a Senior Research Engineer with T.E.C.I. Upon joining Dr. Pugh’s research team, he has been focused on writing grant proposals for national funding agencies. He also has been involved in data analysis of multiple virtual reality environments and medical simulators (e.g. coronary artery bypass graft, robotic hysterectomy, laparoscopic ventral hernia repair, etc.) to discern optimum hand movement of expert surgeons during operations to develop learning objectives for surgical trainees.

Brett Wise is a Researcher for T.E.C.I. His responsibilities in The Center include developing and fabricating simulators such as a bleeding pelvic tumor model and pediatric clubfoot casting model, as well as assisting with data analysis and data collections. A few of the current projects occupying his time include the SBIR tourniquet training system, data analysis of the previous DoD grant plus active studies, development of wearable fabric sensors, and working to understand how Virtual Reality can impact the medical field.

Su Yang is a Researcher with T.E.C.I. He works to apply technology to measure physicians like athletes. His work requires the use of many skills in circuit development, data structuring, data analytics, and programming. These skills allowed the interrogation of technologies, such as force and motion sensors, with software used to interpret the raw signals into structured data sets.

Anna Witt is the laboratory manager for T.E.C.I. Anna’s familiarity with the lab’s history compliments her analytical and organizational skills enabling her to efficiently coordinate the many diverse research projects happening in the lab. As the T.E.C.I. Center’s manager she leverages her leadership and management interests to create a productive and collaborative work environment for students, post-docs and staff.

Cassidi Goll is the Administrative Coordinator for T.E.C.I. She facilitates connections with academic, industry, and research professionals. Additionally, Cassidi has been involved in several data collections. As a healthcare communicator, Cassidi is interested in exploring optimal multi-channel methods for reaching healthcare professionals, medical students and patients in a feverish digital environment.

Main Image: Piron Guillaume