S U R G I C A L
I M A G I N G
DOUBLE VISION
The Close-Up, Wide-Angle Camera
DOC'S DILEMMA Surgeons must decide between wide-angle views or zoomed-in shots of the action.
It's the unavoidable "either/or" of minimally invasive surgery: A
laparoscopic camera can either zoom in for the close-up shot, or back out for the wide-angle overview. A wider field of view captures less detail, while a closer view even have to move. It just sits in one loses peripheral vision.
Two University of Arizona researchers are looking to re-engineer this reality. They're building a laparoscopic camera that can deliver both views, simultaneously, from a single, stationary probe.
"The combination of being able to zoom optically and being able to capture a wide-angle view has some significant advantages," says Mike Nguyen, MD, MPH, a urologist and associate professor of surgery, who's working with optical sciences professor Hong Hua on the project. "One is the camera doesn't even have to move. It just sits in one place while it zooms and tracks. It can just be mounted, and you don't need an assistant to hold it anymore, and because it's not moving, it conflicts less with other surgical instruments."
The innovative camera has not yet undergone biological testing, and the pair is still studying practical aspects of its use, such as whether displaying its dual images side-by-side or picture-in-picture would be most effective for surgeons.
— David Bernard
wins, hands down. But between laparoscopic and different modalities of lap, the outcomes are pretty much the same."
But that's not to say there's no advantage in the visualization advances. "We're not sure it's more efficient, but it's more accurate, and accuracy is everything," says Dr. Baxt. "We do better dissections,
better identification of structures, better suturing. If we can operate better and more accurately, obviously the outcomes will be better.
