Enhanced Vision to Improve Safety in Robotic Surgery

Abstract

In the last decades, major complications in surgery have emerged as a significant public health issue, so the practical implementation of safety measures to prevent injuries and deaths in different phases of surgery is required. The introduction of novel technologies in the operating theater, such as surgical robotic systems, opens new questions on how much and in which way the safety can be further improved. Computer Assisted Surgery (CAS), in combination with robotic systems, can greatly help in enhancing the surgeons' capabilities providing direct patient and process-specific support to surgeons with different degrees of experience. In particular, the application of Augmented Reality (AR) tools could represent a relevant step towards safer clinical procedures, improving the quality of healthcare. This chapter describes the main areas involved in an AR system, such as computer vision methods for identification of areas of interest, surgical scene description and safety warning methods. Recent advances in the field are also presented, providing as an example the Enhanced Vision System for Robotic Surgery (EnViSoRS): an AR system to provide assistance towards the protection of vessels from injury during the execution of surgical procedures with a commercial robotic surgical system.

Accelerating Surgical Robotics Research: A Review of 10 Years With the da Vinci Research Kit

“…Novel Imaging Capabilities dVRK research has tried to keep up with advancements in different imaging techniques, like ultrasound (miniaturized probes) or photoacoustic imaging [46], [50]. Some of these efforts were dedicated to implementing image guidance [49], especially to enhance patient safety during operations [48], [187], [238], [239].…”

An Electrical Bioimpedance Scanning System for Subsurface Tissue Detection in Robot Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

“…However, the imaging facility is not always available and is not compatible with most surgical robots. Additionally, the intra-operative identification of critical tissue has been explored using pre-operative information registered on the patient and visualized by means of Augmented Reality (AR) systems [9]. However, its application is constrained by the complicated image registration algorithms and heavy computation load.…”

The GPS for surgery: A user‐centered evaluation of a navigation system for laparoscopic surgery

“…A promising solution for safer clinical procedures lies in the exploitation of computer‐assisted technologies during the intra‐operative surgical phase 3,4 . The role of such technologies consists in enhancing situation awareness and the surgeon's perceptual, cognitive, and manipulative capabilities.…”