Research Areas

Expanding on our initial success we have developed effective tools for the assessment of nerve-sparing (NS) surgical performance, the principal modifiable determinant of erectile function (EF) outcome after robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP). The correlation of NS skills and EF outcome serves as a test case; so that we can quantify NS surgical performance to predict a surgical outcome. We combine our expert consensus-driven assessment tools and AI-powered automated assessment tools to observe and define the optimal surgical practice for the preservation of EF. We design Virtual Reality exercises for NS skills with tailored formative feedback validated on real RARP EF outcomes.

Surgical gestures, defined as the smallest meaningful interaction of a surgical instrument with human tissue, are a novel approach to deconstructing surgery. After the development and validation of a classification system for dissection gestures, we have moved on to link the performance of these gestures to surgeon technical skills and ultimately to patient outcomes. We believe surgical gestures can benefit surgical education by showing that combinations of gestures may ideally accomplish specific surgical tasks.

Live surgical feedback in the operating room is essential to the surgical training process. We are recording and decoding these teaching interactions among surgeons from across the United States to identify what truly defines effective instruction, to revolutionize intraoperative surgical education.