An Interactive-Shoe for Surgeons

During interventions, surgeons often need to review medical imaging data, e.g., CT scans. Usually, surgeons need to rely on an assistant to browse the images because of sterility requirements. Communication with a substitute operator is tedious and error-prone if the operator does not have an equal level of professional experience and might interrupt the workflow. We present a sensor-integrated shoe allowing surgeons to browse and manipulate 2D medical image data by foot movement. It is portable and wearable. The shoe uses an optical sensor taken from an off-the-shelf computer mouse for tracking the foot movements and an additional micro-switch to turn it on or off. We evaluated the performance of the shoe interface against a control condition with assistant together with ten surgeons in an empirical user study. Our results provide first indications for the effectiveness of a shoe interface in this application area.