Operating Room Instrument Feedback Using Spatial Navigation Zones

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing surgical navigation systems often provide suboptimal feedback for multiple medical instruments, especially when they are far apart or handled by different surgeons, requiring user interaction and limiting simultaneous navigation and visualization.

Innovation Solution

A method and system that utilize spatial regions defined by virtual planes relative to anatomical elements, associating each medical instrument with a specific region, and providing tailored feedback through navigation views, haptic, and auditory cues to support simultaneous navigation of multiple instruments by different surgeons.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If a single navigation view is used to visualize multiple medical instruments, then all instruments can be displayed in one view, but the navigation quality deteriorates when instruments are far apart or handled by different surgeons

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvevisualization completenessVSAvoidnavigation quality
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The patent divides the operating room space into multiple spatial zones using virtual planes, with each zone dedicated to a specific medical instrument. This segmentation allows each instrument to have its own optimized navigation view while maintaining overall situational awareness, resolving the contradiction between displaying all instruments and providing quality navigation for each.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

2Adaptability or versatility

If user interaction is required to select which instrument to visualize, then navigation feedback can be tailored to the selected instrument, but the system complexity and time required increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvefeedback customizationVSAvoidsystem complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system automatically assigns instruments to spatial zones and generates appropriate navigation views without requiring user selection or interaction. The navigation system serves itself by autonomously determining which instrument to visualize based on the spatial zone configuration, eliminating the need for manual instrument selection while maintaining customized feedback for each instrument.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

3Loss of information

If a single navigation view displays multiple instruments, then all instrument poses are visible, but the precision and detail for each individual instrument decrease

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveinstrument pose informationVSAvoidinstrument pose precision
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSMeasurement precision

Solution Approach 1:

By segmenting the operating room into multiple spatial zones, each instrument is assigned to its own dedicated zone with an optimized navigation view. This allows high-precision visualization of each instrument's pose and orientation without the clutter and information loss that would occur in a single shared view, while still maintaining awareness of all instruments through the zone-based organization.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentEP4487804B1Technique for supporting users in an operating room by triggering feedback regarding medical instruments
Publication Date: 2025.12.31 STRYKER EUROPEAN OPERATIONS LIMITED
  • EP4487804B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP4487804B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP4487804B1 patent drawingFigure 3a~3f

AI summary

A method for supporting users in an operating room is provided. The method is performed by a processing system and comprises obtaining spatial information indicative of a plurality of spatial regions in the operating room, each of the plurality of spatial regions being associated with one or more feedback parameters, and obtaining tracking information indicative of tracked poses of a plurality of medical instruments in the operating room. The method further comprises associating, based on the spatial information and the tracking information, each of the medical instruments to at least one of the spatial regions, and triggering feedback, for each of the medical instruments, according to the one or more feedback parameters of the associated at least one spatial region. A system, a computer program and a carrier are also provided.