Assistance device and method for providing imaging support to an operating surgeon during a surgical procedure involving at least one medical instrument

An assistance device for providing imaging support to an operating surgeon during a surgical procedure involving at least one medical instrument, said assistance device comprising:

• a camera for generating a video signal that contains a sequence of image frames;
• a display unit for displaying the sequence of image frames on the basis of the video signal;
• an image processing unit having an instrument detection module for detecting at least one target structure that represents the instrument being used in a frame of the sequence of image frames by identifying a predetermined distinguishing feature and extracting position information that indicates a position of the target structure in the frame;
• a manipulator, which is coupled to the camera and can be actuated via a control signal to move the camera;
• and
• a manipulator controller for generating the control signal from the position information and for actuating the manipulator via the control signal;
• wherein the instrument detection module identifies an image segment as the predetermined distinguishing feature, said image segment being characterized by a color saturation that is equal to or less than a predefined color saturation, and by an outline that delimits the image segment and has at least one rectilinear section,
• wherein the image processing unit includes a segmentation module, which generates a plurality of binary images on the basis of the frame of the sequence of image frames,
• wherein the instrument detection module identifies mutually corresponding rectilinear sections in the binary images and combines these sections to form a composite line segment as the image segment which represents an edge line of the instrument, and
• wherein the segmentation module generates the plurality of binary images on the basis of a grayscale image generated by a preprocessing module of the image processing unit based on the frame of the sequence of image frames, and applies different threshold values to the grayscale image for the generation of said binary images.