GazeTap: towards hands-free interaction in the operating room

During minimally-invasive interventions, physicians need to interact with medical image data, which cannot be done while the hands are occupied. To address this challenge, we propose two interaction techniques which use gaze and foot as input modalities for hands-free interaction. To investigate the feasibility of these techniques, we created a setup consisting of a mobile eye-tracking device, a tactile floor, two laptops, and the large screen of an angiography suite. We conducted a user study to evaluate how to navigate medical images without the need for hand interaction. Both multimodal approaches, as well as a foot-only interaction technique, were compared regarding task completion time and subjective workload. The results revealed comparable performance of all methods. Selection is accomplished faster via gaze than with a foot only approach, but gaze and foot easily interfere when used at the same time. This paper contributes to HCI by providing techniques and evaluation results for combined gaze and foot interaction when standing. Our method may enable more effective computer interactions in the operating room, resulting in a more beneficial use of medical information.