Can Eye Tracking be Used to Predict Performance Improvements in Simulated Medical Training? A Case Study in Central Venous Catheterization.

Manikins have traditionally been used to train ultrasound-guided Central Venous Catheterization (CVC), but are static in nature and require an expert observer to provide feedback. As a result, virtual simulation and personalized learning has been increasingly adopted in medical education to efficiently provide quantitative feedback. The Dynamic Haptic Robotic Trainer (DHRT) trains surgical residents in CVC needle insertions by simulating various patient profiles and presenting personalized feedback on objective performance. However, no studies have examined the learning gains of the personalized learning feedback or the relation of feedback to what the user is focusing on during the training. Thus, this study was developed to determine the effectiveness of the current personalized learning interface through a long-term investigation with 7 surgical residents. The eye tracking analysis showed that residents spent significantly more time fixated on percent aspiration throughout the study; the more time participants spent looking at the Number of Insertions, Percent Aspiration and the Angle of Insertion on the DHRT GUI, the better they performed on subsequent trials on the DHRT system.