Tele-collaboration during robotic surgical procedures

Abstract

A telecollaboration system for use during surgery allows initiation of a video conference session between participants, the participants comprising an on-site user in a surgical operating room, and a remote user not in the surgical operating room. Real time images of patient anatomy during a surgical procedure are captured using an endoscope positioned a patient's body cavity and displayed in real-time to the video conference participants. Real time images of the on-site user and the surgical environment external to the patient are also displayed. Input from remote and/or on site participants is used to generate annotations for display to all participants as overlays on the endoscope images and/or the images of the surgical environment. A user interface allows remote and/or on-site participants to re-orient the external cameras to change the view of the surgeon and/or surgical environment displayed to the participants.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.