easyEndo robotic endoscopy system: Development and usability test in a randomized controlled trial with novices and physicians

BACKGROUND: Some difficulties are common when using endoscopes. Steering is not intuitive, the endoscope weight is a physical burden to physicians and communication problems often occur between operators. METHOD: To overcome these, we developed a robotic endoscopy system and conducted a usability test to compare conventional and robotic manipulation. Nine novices and eighteen physicians participated with the physicians being divided into intermediate and expert groups. The participants performed endoscope insertion into a simulator (physicians) or lesion marking on a testbed (novices) and simulate biopsies. RESULT: Novices completed the tasks faster and with a lower workload when using robotic manipulation, whereas the experts showed the opposite trend. Still, the intermediates showed no significant difference as trials proceeded. Nevertheless, the learning curve analysis showed that the learning rate in all groups is greater for robotic manipulation (21.02% on average) than for conventional manipulation (13.75%) and predicted that physicians can reach manual performance. CONCLUSION: The proposed robotic endoscopy system may allow solo-manipulation using one controller and may be more intuitive and convenient to use than conventional manipulation.