Effect of reduced stereoscopic camera separation on ring placement with a surgical telerobot

Background A custom, stereoscopic video camera was built to study the impact of decreased camera separation on a stereoscopically viewed, visual–manual task resembling some aspects of surgery. Materials and methods Twelve naïve subjects and one of the experimenters were first trained in a ring placement task using the stereo-laparoscope and subsequently switched to the stereo-camera, which was used with differing camera separations ranging from 100% of the laparoscope’s separation to a biocular view corresponding to no separation (2D). Results The results suggest firstly, that stereopsis (i.e., use of 3D laparoscopes) improves surgical performance over conventional 2D laparoscopes, and secondly that camera separation may be reduced 20–35% without appreciably degrading user performance. Even a 50% reduction in separation resulted in stereoscopically supported performance far superior compared to the 2D condition. Conclusions The results suggest that existing 3D laparoscopes which use 5-mm camera separation may well be significantly miniaturized without causing substantial performance degradation.