On January 16, 2019, a team from Rennes University Hospital carried out the first-ever series of surgeries using a solution, initiated by b<>com, that retransmits images of the equipment used in the operating room, perfectly synchronized and in real time.
A software allowing the synchronization of the images of the equipment
The product of research into decreasingly invasive operating techniques, image-guided surgery is changing dramatically. In an operating room, a surgery requires a team surrounded with equipment that provides video images of the operation (ultrasound, endoscope video, room camera), allowing the surgeon access to all the information he needs for the procedure to go as it should.
But the challenge today is how to increase manual precision and provide more accurate information, in a way that is perfectly synchronized with the operators. That’s why b<>com created software to synchronize the images of the equipment used for high-precision guidance of surgical procedures. The solution also handles the transmission of those video streams and the configuration of the equipment over an IP network, under a new interoperability standard called DICOM-RTV. This new international standard for real-time streaming video management is a major advance that will aid in numerous upcoming developments in surgery.
A successful experiment
Deployed in a urology operating room, this system was successfully used by the surgical team during the operations on Wednesday, January 16. It makes it possible to combine and synchronize the images from the two video sources used simultaneously during surgery, in real time. For the occasion, this innovative solution was deployed in parallel with the existing equipment, after having been tested multiple times on a simulator before being used in an actual situation. The use of streaming video management in DICOM-RTV format in an actual situation to allow streams to be synchronized in real time is a world-first.
