Effect of binocular stereopsis on surgical manipulation performance and fatigue when using a stereoscopic endoscope.

We compared performance in three kinds of endoscopic tasks -- a pegboard, incision, and suturing - under the monoscopic (2D) and stereoscopic (3D) visual conditions conducted for 1 hour in total. We also evaluated the degree of fatigue from the aspects of subjective and objective consciousness using the critical flicker frequency (CFF) test together with a questionnaire of fatigue. A total of eight subjects showed higher performance when using the 3D display than the 2D display in all three tasks and, simultaneously, improvement in performance as a result of learning effect. No difference of fatigue was found depending on the display conditions both in the CFF test and questionnaire.