**5. Conclusion**

In this study, a novel method for automatic identification of a surgical operation and on-line distinction of the singularity of the identified surgical operation was proposed. The surgical operation "suturing" was performed using two forceps, namely a needle driver and assistant forceps, in the built simulation box for laparoscopic-surgery. Then, the identification of the surgical operation for "suturing" and the singularity distinction of the identified surgical operation "insertion of a needle" were carried out.

As for the identification of the surgical operation, suturing was divided into six operations. The features of the operation are extracted from the measurements of the movement of the forceps, namely the amount of distortion measured by four strain gauges and the angular velocity of gimbal and stylus measured by haptic device PHANTOM Omni. Then, on the basis of the threshold criteria for the six operations, the surgical operation was identified as one of the six operations. Each surgical operation in suturing could be identified with more than 80% accuracy.

As for the singularity distinction of the identified surgical operation, when the surgical operation was identified as "insertion of a needle", general distinction of normal operation or singular operation and distinction of three kinds of the states, namely "Posture", "Straining" or "Sudden" in the singular operation, were performed by the SOM using the 6-dimensional feature vector which extracted the features from SEMG. Then, the singularity of the surgical operation of insertion could be distinguished with approximately 80% accuracy on an average. On the other hand, recognition rate of each state in the singular operation was approximately 30% to 90% accuracy depending on the individual difference. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish three kinds of the states in the singular operation with sufficient accuracy.

However, in a complicated surgical operation such as insertion of a needle, it can be said that general distinction of normal operation or singular operation was able to be recognized with high accuracy.
