Objective Surgical Skill Differentiation for Physical and Virtual Surgical Trainers via Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.

This study proposes a methodology to objectively differentiate surgical skill for physical and virtual trainers by measuring functional activation between expert and novice surgeons. Results indicate that there is a significant increase in functional activation for novices in the right lateral prefrontal cortex, and decrease in the left medial primary motor cortex, and the supplementary motor area for the physical trainer (p<0.05). Results also indicate that there is a significant lower functional activation for novices compared to experts in the left medial primary motor cortex for the virtual skills trainer (p<0.05).