Contextual Surgical Imaging Assistance for Dynamic Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
During surgical procedures, imaging devices capture imagery that includes both important and unimportant elements, with the relevance of these elements dynamically changing based on the operational context of the surgery. Existing technologies struggle to effectively highlight or obscure these elements in real-time, leading to distractions and reduced visibility for surgical teams.
Innovation Solution
A contextual assistance system that employs extended reality technologies, such as augmented reality, to identify the operational context of a surgical procedure. This system augments the depiction of specific objects at a surgical site based on the identified context, enhancing visibility and reducing distractions by highlighting relevant elements and obscuring less relevant ones.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If all elements captured by the imaging device are displayed, then complete information is provided, but distracting or unimportant elements reduce visibility and cause distractions
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different visual properties to different regions of the image based on their importance. Important elements are enhanced with increased brightness, contrast, or highlighting, while unimportant elements are dimmed or obscured. This creates a non-uniform quality distribution across the image that guides the surgical team's attention to critical areas without completely removing any elements from the display.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses color modifications to differentiate between important and unimportant elements in the surgical field. Important anatomical structures or surgical targets may be highlighted with specific colors or color enhancements, while less relevant elements are desaturated or assigned neutral tones. This color-based differentiation allows the surgical team to quickly identify critical elements without losing contextual awareness.
2Ease of operation
If the surgical team manually identifies and focuses on important elements, then attention can be directed to relevant areas, but the dynamic nature of surgical contexts makes this difficult to maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors the surgical context by analyzing video feeds from imaging devices, sensor data, and procedural information. Based on this feedback, the system dynamically adjusts which elements are highlighted or obscured in real-time. The system can detect changes in surgical phase, instrument position, and anatomical landmarks, automatically adapting the visual presentation to match the current operational context without requiring manual intervention from the surgical team.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transforms the static image display into a dynamic adaptive interface that automatically responds to changing surgical conditions. As the surgical procedure progresses through different phases or as new elements enter the field of view, the system recalculates element importance and adjusts visual enhancement accordingly. This dynamic adaptation ensures that the most relevant elements are always prominently displayed regardless of how the surgical context evolves.
3Device complexity
If traditional imaging systems are used without augmentation, then the system is simple, but visibility of relevant elements is reduced when obscurants are present
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces computational algorithms and image processing intermediaries between the raw imaging device output and the final display. These intermediaries analyze the captured images, identify important elements that may be obscured by smoke, blood, or other artifacts, and apply enhancement techniques such as segmentation, edge detection, or virtual highlighting. This intermediary processing layer adds complexity to the system architecture but enables the surgical team to see through obscurants that would otherwise block their view.
Data Source
AI summary
An exemplary contextual assistance system identifies, during a surgical procedure, an operational context of the surgical procedure while a particular object is present at a surgical site depicted by a first version of an image. Based on the identified operational context, the contextual assistance system augments a depiction of the particular object within a second version of the image that is presented to a user associated with the surgical procedure. Corresponding systems and methods are also disclosed.