Assessment of Surgical Tasks Using Neuroimaging Dataset (ASTaUND)

Abstract

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging tool for studying brain activity in mobile subjects. Open-access fNIRS datasets are limited to simple and/or motion-restricted tasks. Here, we report a fNIRS dataset acquired on mobile subjects performing Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) tasks in a laboratory environment. Demonstrating competency in the FLS tasks is a prerequisite for board certification in general surgery in the United States. The ASTaUND data set was acquired over four different studies. We provide the relevant information about the hardware, FLS task execution protocols, and subject demographics to facilitate the use of this open-access data set. We also provide the concurrent FLS scores, a quantitative metric for surgical skill assessment developed by the FLS committee. This data set is expected to support the growing field of assessing surgical skills via neuroimaging data and provide an example of data processing pipeline for use in realistic, non-restrictive environments.

Fig. 1

Summary of metadata for each dataset with sensitivity analysis plots of the fNIRS montage used in the Expert/Novice and Learning Curve datasets (top) and transcranial Electrical Stimulation datasets (bottom); LS, Long Separation. SS, Short Separation. PFC, Prefrontal Cortex. M1, Primary Motor Cortex. SMA, Supplementary Motor Area. *Due to hardware issues, data from one short separation channel was not collected in the learning curve data.

Fig. 2

(a) Schematic Outlining Cohort and Study Design: The learning curve study design is depicted in a gray box chain format, where each box represents a day of the study. The untrained control group (orange) performed the task on the first day and again on the post-test day. The block design of expert and novice surgeons is shown in red and green boxes respectively. Note: ‘‘n’’ is number of subjects and ‘‘m’’ is number of trails performed by each subject. (b) Short-term tES Study Block Design: The vertical red box labeled “Pre/Post-test and fNIRS” indicates that these components were conducted simultaneously. The time indicated at the bottom of the block represents the duration spent on each respective component. (c) block design long-term tES study: Each small black box represents one training day. The blocks on the bottom row (red boxes) indicate the specific procedures carried out on each session on the respective day.

Fig. 3

(a) Illustration of surgical task performance with simultaneous fNIRS data collection. (b) Diagram visualizing the pipeline for data processing and technical validation (c) The HRF of each of the sampled cortex regions, averaged across the Expert/Novice dataset participants. Adapted from ref. . (d) The HRF of each of the sampled cortex regions was averaged across the participants of the Long-Term tES dataset. Adapted from ref. .

Fig. 4

(a,c,e,g) Subject-wise (across all channels and trials for each subject) signal to noise ratio calculations for the Expert vs. Novice, Learning Curve, Short-Term tES and Long-Term tES studies respectively. (b,d,f,h) Subject-Wise motion ratio calculations for the Expert vs. Novice, Learning Curve, Short-Term tES and Long-Term tES studies respectively. (i) Task-related contrast to noise ratio for Expert vs Novice, Trainee vs Control, Sham vs tDCS and Sham vs tRNS populations.