Generating suture guidance overlays on real-time surgical images

A method comprising the steps of:

• capturing a digital image of a treatment site in a region of patient anatomy;
• displaying the digital image on an image display;
• identifying a location of a tissue edge at the treatment site, the tissue edge being an edge to be approximated with another edge in a suturing operation;
• identifying a suture location at which a suture has been passed through tissue at the treatment site;
• measuring a distance between the tissue edge and the suture location;
• determining whether the distance is below a pre-determined minimum suture-to-edge distance;
• if the distance is below the predetermined minimum suture-to-edge distance, displaying a first overlay type on the display of the image on the image display, the first overly type indicating that the distance is below the predetermined minimum suture-to-edge distance, displaying a second overlay type on the display of the image on the image display.