To increase the timeliness, objectivity, and efficiency in evaluating surgical procedures such as those performed by ophthalmology residents learning of cataract surgery, an automatic analysis system for surgeries such as cataract surgery is provided to assess performance, particularly in the capsulorrhexis step on the Kitaro simulator. Computer vision technologies are employed to measure performance of this critical step including duration, centrality, circularity, size, as well as motion stability during the capsulorrhexis procedure. Consequently, a grading mechanism is established based on either linear regression or non-linear classification via Support Vector Machine (SVM) of those computed measures. Comparisons of expert graders to the computer vision based approach have demonstrated the accuracy and consistency of the computerized technique.
