title: A novel multimodal platform for assessing surgical technical skills.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Established methods for assessing surgical performance face limitations. Global rating scales and procedure-specific checklists are resource intensive and rely on expert opinions. Alternatives that use technology to track hand movements, such as magnetic and optical tracking systems, are generally expensive and ill suited to the surgical environment.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors present a new platform that integrates a novel, low-cost optical tracking system, magnetic tracking technology and a videographic recording system to quantify surgical performance synchronously across all modalities. The validity of this platform was tested by examining its ability to differentiate between the performance of expert and novice participants on a basic surgical task.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Each modality was able to differentiate between expert and novice participants, and metrics were well correlated across modalities.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The authors have developed a platform for assessing surgical performance. It can operate in the absence of expert raters and has the potential to provide immediate feedback to trainees.
authors.affiliation: Surgical Skills Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada. ranil.sonnadara@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Ranil
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sonnadara
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rittenhouse
authors.forename: Ajmal
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mihailidis
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Drozdzal
authors.forename: Oleg
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Safir
authors.forename: Shuk On
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Leung
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008280:Magnetics; D055096:Optical Devices; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013536:Suture Techniques; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014741:Video Recording