Operating Room Awarness and Supervision in the Context of Laparoscopy

The motivation of this development is the growing use of mini-invasive surgeries instead of open surgery. Indeed, if this kind of intervention increases the patient safety by reducing the recovery time and the risk of complications, it has several drawbacks for the surgeon that makes the surgery difficult. Indirect vision and the limited access to the operating field are the most important of them. With our smart trocar we intend to make the surgeon's work easier by giving him new information that compensates the lack of haptic feedback and the poor depth perception inherent to the laparoscopy. This project is a global-positioning and a recognition system designed for rigid laparoscopic instruments and based on computer vision and image processing. Our system is composed by both a software and a hardware component. It consists in the addition of a wireless camera to the upper edge of the trocar and of markers both on the surgical tools shaft and in the operating room. The first goals are to make surgeries cheaper and safer. Thanks to this system many different applications can be imagined: from the training of laparoscopist by the recognition of surgical procedure phases to the real-time analysis of the remaining time of surgery for a better management of operating rooms schedule and a better efficiency of hospitals. ; Computer Science, Department of