conTACT - A Vibrotactile Display for Computer Aided Surgery

In this paper the concept and the first proving experiments of a navigation system for assistance during surgical interventions is presented. Novel aspects of this system are a new approach to transmit the navigation information to the surgeon. Contrary to known navigation systems the proposed approach does not only use visual support but provides information primarily by tactile stimuli. So the surgeon is not constrained to avert the gaze from the field of surgery during the navigation process. This paper concludes with the experimental evaluation of signal perception and a positioning task with tactile transmission of the navigation information