A Survey of auditory display in image-guided interventions <s> Informal evaluations <s> Current medical visualization technology intended for positional guidance in surgical applications may only ever have limited utility in the operating room due to the preexisting visual requirements of surgical practice. Additionally, visual systems impose limits as a result of their high latency, poor image resolution, problems with stereopsis and physical strain upon the user. Audio technology is relatively unexamined in the broad range of available methodologies for medical devices. The potential to translate surgical instrument position into audio feedback presents a novel solution to the human factors and engineering problems faced by visual display technology because audio technology employs a rich and as yet unburdened sensory modality. We describe an experimental system we have developed for investigating this new interface design approach using commercially available hardware. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey of auditory display in image-guided interventions <s> Informal evaluations <s> Radiofrequency ablation is applied to treat a lesion using a needle inserted into the patient, which delivers local radiofrequency energy. Guided surgical methods allow surgeons to view the placement of the needle in relation to the patient to aid in guiding the tip of the needle to the target point. Unfortunately, such methods require that surgeons remove attention from the patient in order to receive guidance information from a screen. We introduce a novel method to align and insert an ablation needle using auditory display, allowing the surgeon to retain attention on the patient. First evaluation results show that novice users can successfully guide a needle towards a target point using primarily auditory display. We hypothesize that successful auditory display will lead to increased attention on the patient and reduce unnecessary operator head and neck movements. <s> BIB002
Three of the 15 reviewed articles provide informal evaluations without statistical data gathering or analysis; see Table 2 for an overview. Wegner and Karron BIB001 provide solely a technical description of their range of auditory display methods for generalized tracked instrument placement. Wegner  states that "informal usability testing" was completed, but does not further elaborate. Black et al. BIB002 perform informal, "think-aloud" evaluations  of 2 auditory display methods for ablation needle placement with 8 non-expert participants. Comments were gathered during the interviews and suggest general satisfaction with performance during the placement task.