GUILDFORD, England, December 14, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Doctors will shortly be performing the world's first remote 3D keyhole surgery during a symposium at the University of Surrey. Keyhole surgery - where doctors operate on organs through a tiny incision - reduces the length of hospital stays and post-operative complications. This also means that patients experience less scarring and pain. 3D keyhole surgery is a state-of-the-art extension of standard keyhole surgery that uses 3D cameras like those used to make the film 'Avatar'. It puts the surgeon right inside the patient's body and significantly improves accuracy.

This surgical breakthrough forms part of a large-scale study into operator fatigue using 3D surgical equipment that arises from a collaboration between surgeons at the Royal Surrey County Hospital and academics at the University of Surrey. As well as surgical evaluation, cutting-edge research, led by Dr David Windridge of the University's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, will seek to measure the changes in a surgeon's focus of attention during prolonged operations by incorporating eye-tracking and computer-vision technology into the 3D surgical environment.

This research consequently offers a unique opportunity both to improve surgical safety and to further our understanding of how the human brain functions while performing tasks involving complex hand-eye coordination.

Dr Windridge comments: "By measuring attention while performing operations using state-of-the-art 3D surgical equipment, this collaboration between surgeons and academics at the University of Surrey gives us a unique opportunity both to improve surgical safety and also address far-reaching questions how the human mind focuses attention while performing complex tasks."

Video footage of this project can be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/34v6654

For more information on the symposium please visit: http://tinyurl.com/39tu5d2

Notes to Editors