Abstract— There has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methods to improve the safety of surgery such as Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). While these new technologies and methods have many advantages for patients, they often require surgeons to undergo long and difficult training. In this context, several training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon’s abilities and also to assess his/her skills. Our research is aimed at using WB-2R (Waseda Bioinstrumentation system NO.2 Refined), to investigate and analyze a surgeon’s movements and performance. In this paper, we analyze the effects of two days of laparoscopic training on a novice subject. By using the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of WB-2R it is possible to evaluate the novice’s ability and improvement to handle surgical instruments and perform some knots of basic C-Loop suture. The preliminary analysis of the data acquired during the experiments (the mean and standard deviation of acceleration; 95% cumulated distribution of acceleration; the path length of the movements of hands and the execution time completing the knots) clearly shows the novice’s improvements after the training. WB-2R system could provide additional information improving to help assess the experience and performance of surgeons, and to show the effectiveness of laparoscopic training. These analyses and modeling are an important step to realize a better training/evaluation system for surgeons during MIS, to understand better how the surgery is performed. I. INTRODUCTION INIMALLY Invasive Surgery has become the dominant technique in modern surgery as it has less operative trauma for the patient than an equivalent invasive Zhuohua Lin is with the Advanced Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan 169-8555 (zhuohualin@takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp). Massimiliano Zecca is with Consolidated Research Institute for Advanced Science and Medical Care, and a researcher at the Humanoid Robotics Institute (HRI) and Italy-Japan Joint Laboratory on Humanoid and Personal Robotics “RoboCasa”, Waseda University (zecca@aoni.waseda.jp). Salvatore Sessa is with Consolidated Research Institute for Advanced Science and Medical Care, Waseda University. Toshihiro Kusano is with the Advanced Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan 169-8555. Kazuko Itoh is with the Advanced Research Institute for Science and Engineering, and Italy-Japan Joint Laboratory on Humanoid and Personal Robotics “RoboCasa”, Waseda University. Atsuo Takanishi is with Mechanical Engineering Department, and one of the core members of the Humanoid Robotics Institute (HRI) and Italy-Japan Joint Laboratory on Humanoid and Personal Robotics “RoboCasa”, Waseda University (takanisi@waseda.jp). procedure. Its operative time is longer, but hospitalization time is shorter. It causes less pain and scarring, speeds recovery, and reduces the incidence of post-surgical complications. While these new technologies have many advantages for patients, they often require surgeons to undergo long and difficult training. Mainly, MIS imposes limitations to surgeons in visual and haptic perceptions, and creates challenges unique to this type of surgery: • reduced depth perception of the operative field caused by the use of 2D monitors; • poor hand-eye coordination as a result of location of the monitor; • variable amplification; • mirrored movement and disorientation; • motion limitations due to trocar-induced invariant points; • reduced haptic feedback from the use of long and slender surgical instruments [1]. As a result, with the shift from open surgery to MIS, new problems have arisen related to the training of surgeons. One of the paramount issues in this surgical education is the evaluation of surgical skill. In this context, it is fundamental to establish efficient training exercises to enhance the dexterity of surgeons and to define objective metrics for assessing their experience and performance [2]. An accurate means of assessing surgical skill would allow surgical educators to evaluate the effectiveness of skills training, monitoring progress and learning curves of students and residents along the course of their study [3,4]. And it is also very important to analyze how people move and interact during surgery and to understand how the surgery process is managed and performed. Various training procedures have been established to enhance the dexterity of surgeons, and skill evaluation metrics have been developed to assess the experience and performance of surgeons. Much of the previous work in the field of surgical training in virtual environments has been focused on the definition of metrics for an objective evaluation of surgical performance. One of the main objectives is to assess the abilities of surgeons by the comparison of different performance between experts and novices. Many kinematic parameters and various indexes have been proposed for different surgical exercises [5-7]; in addition, segmentation Waseda Bioinstrumentation System WB-2R as a Wearable Tool for an Objective Analysis of Surgeon’s Performance Zhuohua Lin, Student Member, IEEE, Massimiliano Zecca, Member, IEEE, Salvatore Sessa, Member, IEEE, Toshihiro Kusano, Kazuko Itoh, and Atsuo Takanishi, Member, IEEE M