Differentiating Surgeons’ Expertise solely by Eye Movement Features

Abstract

Medical schools are increasingly seeking to use objective measures to assess surgical skills. This extends even to perceptual skills, which are particularly important in minimally invasive surgery. Eye tracking provides a promising approach to obtaining such objective metrics of visual perception. In this work, we report on results of a cadaveric study of visual perception during shoulder arthroscopy. We present a model for classifying surgeons into three levels of expertise using only eye movements. The model achieves a classification accuracy of 84.44% using only a small set of selected features. We also examine and characterize the changes in visual perception metrics between the different levels of expertise, forming a basis for development of a system for objective assessment.