Automated surgical illumination system

#The present invention relates to surgical lighting systems.

#It is generally believed that it would be desirable to produce a surgical lighting system that can eliminate the need for a surgeon or scrub nurse to manually move a surgical light with their hands to provide focused lighting at the surgical site. Such a system would prevent undue contamination of instruments as a result of transfer of bacterium from lamp handles, allow surgical personnel to focus their attention to more important tasks such as instrument passing, and alleviate the need for low-hanging, reachable lamp handles which may obstruct the surgical flow.

#There exist several different approaches to alleviate this problem. U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,769 by Luntsford discloses a surgical lighting system which is remotely controlled by surgical personnel. This system is also capable of “recording” a sequence of lamp configurations which can be “played back” during time of surgery. Another solution as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,560,492 by Borders describes a system which can control several aspects of operating room function such as: patient table movement, temperature control, and lighting intensity. The solution by Luntsford eliminates the need for surgical personnel to manually move surgical lamps by allowing them to remotely control the lamps, but does not totally eliminate the need to have surgical personnel to initiate such movements, and is therefore only semi-automatic. The solution by Borders suffers from a similar downside, as a user is required to control the disclosed system. Border's solution offers to modulate the intensity of the surgical lights, but does not allow for movement of said lights.

#FIG. 1 illustrates the automated surgical illumination system according to the present invention.

#FIG. 2 illustrates to the cone attached to the lower arm of the surgical illumination system as an example of the invention.

#FIG. 3 shows an example lighting apparatus of the present invention.

#FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 illustrate an automated surgical illumination system according to one embodiment of the present invention. The base 1 of the device is to be mounted to the ceiling. Attached to the base 1 is the upper arm segment 3. The upper arm segment 3 rotates 360 degrees both clockwise and counterclockwise on its axis within base 1. Upper arm segment 3 is able to rotate in said manner when motor 2 is turned on in either direction. Attached to the upper arm segment 3 at hinge 5 is lower arm segment 6. Lower arm segment 6 rotates 180 degrees both clockwise and counterclockwise at hinge 5. Lower arm segment 6 is able to rotate in said manner when motor 4 is turned on in either direction. At the end of lower arm attaches a third motor 7 that gives the cone the third range of motion. The lamp reflective cone 8 also functions as a stage for several sensors 9 mounted to the cone 8 to form a sensor array. The light source 10 is affixed and centered inside the reflective cone 8.

#An LED emitter (active optical marker) 11 is embedded in a surgical glove worn over the hand. A switch 12 connects and disconnects power to the LED emitter and is worn at a location on the surgeon's hand or body. The said gloved hand is placed underneath the reflective cone 8, which also functions as the sensor array stage.

#FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 illustrate another embodiment of the present invention using a passive optical marker. The lamp reflective cone 8 houses several infrared (IR) LEDs 14 and a camera with IR pass filter 15. The light source 10 is affixed outside the IR LEDs 14 and a camera with IR pass filter 15.