A method of decreasing transmission time of visual feedback for the Internet-based surgical training system

Abstract

The Internet-based robotic catheter operating system for Vascular Interventional Surgery (VIS) provides a promising way to enhance emergency medical care and to train novice doctors to learn basic wire or catheter handling skills across the whole world. However, variable and unpredictable transmission time delay of visual feedback is always associated with the significant deterioration of the operability and may result in damage to organs in actual surgery. In this paper, we proposed a new method to reduce transmission time of visual feedback effectively based on image processing technique. At surgical site, the shape of active catheter is tracked in real time to provide coordinates of catheter in real vascular structure. And at operation site, position of catheter is reconstructed in 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional blood vessel model which has the same geometrical structure with that at surgical site according to the coordinate values received from surgical site. Transmission time of visual feedback is therefore decreased due to significant reduction of data volume. Finally, we present results from a visually guided tele-operative experiment where show that the proposed method makes a significant performance improvement for tele-operation with delays corresponding to inter-country distances.