A medical imaging system comprising:
- a surgical camera configured to capture an image of a selected subject via a plurality of image sensors, wherein each image is mapped to a corresponding portion of the selected subject;
- an optical system used to transmit said images from an objective lens to said plurality of image sensors;
- a user input device configured to accept input from a system user via a user interface to select an area of interest (AOI) of the selected subject wherein each of the plurality of image sensors focus on differing areas of the selected subject to provide a greater resolution of the selected subject;
- an image processing module comprising one or more processors, a first input configured to receive images captured by the surgical camera via connection to an external communication medium, a second input configured to receive the user input identifying an AOI via the user interface, and an output including raw image data to a display monitor wherein said raw image data is representative of uncompressed and unprocessed video or static image data captured by the surgical camera;
- the image processing module configured to select a proper subset of images, via the one or more processors, that is mapped to the AOI of the selected subject by determining which image sensor or group of image sensors corresponds to the AOI based on a known mapping between portions of the displayed image and the plurality of image sensors, and to provide an image of the AOI, captured by a selected proper subset of fewer than all of the plurality of image sensors at the output;
- wherein said imaging processing module comprises logic for a plurality of purposes including stitching various image data from said plurality of image sensors into a single picture, compressing high resolution images to a format suitable for display devices that have lower resolutions, and providing image enhancement;
- wherein users are enabled to use stored image data in non-real time;
- the display monitor having an input coupled to the output of the image processing module to display the image of the AOI;
- and
- a clarifying algorithm configured to process said first input, wherein said processing comprises removing visual obfuscation;
- wherein said image processing module further comprises an image sensor data compression module configured to employ one or more compression algorithms which, when employed, compress image data from the selected proper subset of image sensors corresponding to the AOI with a reduced amount of compression relative to image data outside the AOI.