Mathmatical Surgery Model?

Study turning surgery into math model
BALTIMORE (UPI) -- Mathematics is being adapted into the "language of surgery" as U.S. researchers develop models to improve operating room skills.

Johns Hopkins University computer scientists are building mathematical models to represent the safe, effective ways to perform surgery, including suturing, dissecting and joining tissue. The project's goal is to develop a way of objectively evaluating surgeons' work to help improve their skills, researchers said in a release.

The project has already showed promise in modeling suture work. Researchers performed suturing aided by a robotic device that recorded the movements and made them available for computer analysis.

Complex surgical tasks occur in a series of steps resembling the way words, sentences and paragraphs are used to convey language, said Gregory Hager, a computer science professor and principal investigator. The procedures were broken down into simple gestures that could correspond mathematically with computer software.

"Surgery is a skilled activity, and it has a structure that can be taught and acquired," Hager said. "We can think of that structure as 'the language of surgery.' To develop mathematical models for this language, we're borrowing techniques from speech recognition technology and applying them to motion recognition and skills assessment."