Aspiring doctors might want to take gaming very seriously after scientists perform long-distance surgery using a game controller.
While using off-the-shelf game console controllers for complex tasks is hardly new – the US Navy has been using Xbox 360 controllers to operate submarine periscopes for some time now – researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and ETH Zurich managed to use a PlayStation controller to perform surgery over 9,300 km (5,780 miles) away.
Although the patient was not a human, the feat is no less impressive. Doctors in Switzerland successfully performed an endoscopy, a procedure examining the insides of the body with a camera, on a pig in Hong Kong, a distance nearly twice as long as between Los Angeles and New York.
Scientists used a robotic system with a magnetic endoscope on the Hong Kong end. To prove the concept's accessibility, scientists connected both locations using a WebSocket with a standard internet connection. The Swiss team saw the whole procedure through a video feed and controlled the machinery using a game controller.
The magnetic field direction, which moves the endoscope, was controlled using a standard PlayStation 3 Move Navigation Controller, a piece of mass-produced equipment that costs less than $30 on Amazon. Scientists managed to perform a biopsy of the stomach wall tissue, proving that it's possible to take a tissue sample via long distance.
The research, published in the Advanced Intelligent Systems journal, claims that the experiment proves the tech is viable for human use. Moreover, it could allow people to perform “minimally invasive procedures” on patients in remote areas. Researchers believe that neurovascular interventions, cardiac ablation, and fetal surgery could become possible via the procedure, which has been dubbed “telesurgery.”
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