Stabilizing FOV Under the Microscope: Towards Eye-Hand Coordination in Motor-Control Tasks

Eye-hand coordination under the microscope is a fundamental skill to many microsurgical specializations. In this work, we investigate the oculomotor and motor differences between novice and expert surgeons in the classical eye-hand coordination Fitts’ law task. However, the field of view under the microscope is never static or stable due to inherent internal and external artifacts. In this work, we present methodological steps necessary for stabilizing the operation field of view using RANSAC and for defining static areas of interest (i.e., task targets) and dynamic areas of interest using YOLOv8 (i.e., instrument movement). When combined, we observed that under the microscope, eye movements were spatially more focused than hand movements and that experts relied on parafoveal vision when targeting large targets. Our work opens the path to objective and autonomous skill-acquisition assessment in microsurgical expertise.