Surgical Robot Imaging System Occlusion Removal
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Solution Overview
Problem
In minimally invasive surgery, surgical instruments mounted on robot arms can obstruct the view of the surgical region, causing occluded areas that hinder the operator's visibility and precision during procedures.
Innovation Solution
A surgical robot system equipped with an imaging system that uses multiple cameras to capture images of the surgical area, detects occluded regions, removes them through image processing, warps and matches the images to generate a final, unobstructed view, and displays this on the operator's control interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If surgical instruments are disposed under the operator's field of vision, then the operator can manipulate the master device in a familiar surgical environment, but the surgical instruments obstruct the view of the surgical region
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from a 2D occluded view to a 3D restored view by introducing multiple cameras positioned at different spatial locations. These cameras capture images from multiple dimensions, allowing the system to reconstruct the occluded surgical region by combining perspectives that bypass the physical obstruction of surgical instruments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an image processing system as an intermediary between the cameras and the operator's display. This intermediary detects occluded regions, restores them using image synthesis algorithms, and presents a corrected view that eliminates the obstruction problem while maintaining the benefits of the robotic surgical environment.
2Loss of information
If multiple cameras are used to capture affected area images, then occluded regions can be detected and removed, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the image processing system multi-functional by combining several operations into a single integrated unit: occlusion detection, image restoration, warping, and synthesis are all performed by the same image processing circuitry. This reduces overall system complexity despite using multiple cameras, as the processing component serves multiple purposes simultaneously.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the functions of multiple cameras and their associated processing circuits into a unified image capture unit with integrated processing. Rather than treating each camera as a separate system requiring independent processing, the invention combines them into a coordinated system that shares processing resources and algorithms, thereby managing complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A surgical robot system includes a slave system to perform a surgical operation on a patient and an imaging system that includes an image capture unit including a plurality of cameras to acquire a plurality of affected area images, an image generator detecting an occluded region in each of the affected area images acquired by the plurality of cameras, removing the occluded region therefrom, warping each of the affected area images from which the occluded region is removed, and matching the affected area images to generate a final image, and a controller driving each of the plurality of cameras of the image capture unit to acquire the plurality of affected area images and inputting the acquired plurality of affected area images to the image generator to generate a final image.