Impact of data compression and security devices on telesurgery systems

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Surgical Technology
• Cybersecurity

Background:

• Telesurgery offers remote surgical capabilities.
• Ensuring security and maintaining performance during data transmission are critical challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of secure telesurgery.
• To evaluate the impact of image compression and cybersecurity on surgical performance and data transmission.

Main Methods:

• Remote telesurgery using the hinotori™ surgical robot over a secure line.
• Testing image compression at various bandwidths (120-20 Mbps).
• Simulating cyberattacks to test security device performance on artificial organ models.

Main Results:

• No significant loss in operability or image quality observed, even at 20 Mbps.
• Security devices effectively detected simulated cyberattacks while allowing essential robot communications.
• Minimal delay (≤2 min) and low transmission control protocol (TCP) error rates (0.00-0.04%) were recorded.

Conclusions:

• Implementing security measures enables safe telesurgery by mitigating cyber threats without compromising surgical performance.
• Findings support the practical development of economically and technologically viable telesurgical systems.