Towards an autonomous robot for camera control during laparoscopic surgery

During laparoscopic surgery, the surgeon currently must instruct a human camera operator or a robotic arm to move the camera. This process is distracting, and the camera is not always placed in an ideal location. To mitigate these problems, we have developed a test platform that tracks laparoscopic instruments and automatically moves a camera with no explicit human direction.

The test platform is designed to mimic a typical laparoscopic working environment, where two hand-operated tools are manipulated through small ports. A pan-tilt-zoom camera is positioned over the tools, which emulates the positioning capabilities of a straight (0°) scope placed through a trocar. A camera control algorithm automatically keeps the tools in the view. In addition, two test tasks that require camera movement have been developed to aid in future evaluation of the system.

The system was found to successfully track the laparoscopic instruments in the camera view as intended. The camera is moved and zoomed to follow the instruments in a smooth and consistent fashion.

This technology shows that it is possible to create an autonomous camera system that cooperates with a surgeon without requiring any explicit user input. However, the currently implemented camera control behaviors are not ideal or sufficient for many surgical tasks. Future work will be performed to develop, test, and refine more complex behaviors that are optimized for different kinds of surgical tasks. In addition, portions of the test platform will be redesigned to enable its use in actual laparoscopic procedures.