Objective Assessment of Surgical Skill with fNIRS

We present an advanced optical neuroimaging methodology that can objectively and successfully classify subjects with different expertise levels associated with surgical skills. The methodology was tested by assessing laparoscopic surgery skills within the framework of the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery program, which is a pre-requisite for certification in general surgery. We demonstrate that optical-based metrics outperformed current metrics for surgical certification in classifying subjects with varying surgical expertise. Moreover, we report that optical neuroimaging allows for the successful classification of subjects during the acquisition of such skills.