A User-Centered and Workflow-Aware Unified Display for the Operating Room

In a modern operating room, usually a plethora of imaging devices is available. These come with at least one monitor each and additional, wall-mounted monitors are often available to review patient data and pre-operative imaging. Due to sterility constraints and limited space in the operating room (OR), most of these devices have to be organized around the operating table with some distance. This leads to the effect that the surgeon has to leave the sterile operation table in order to gain device or display access and usually relies on external help to manipulate the device parameters. In this paper we propose an approach to this problem by employing a single, central and sterile draped display within the reach of the surgeon. This display receives live image data of all devices used in the OR, and pre-operatively acquired DICOM files. Depending on the current workflow phase of the operation, the surgeon has the possibility to switch among the sources with a gesture recognition system. Given the correct context, the surgeon can change selected parameters through other gestures, like adjusting the visible slice within a DICOM viewer. The system was designed in close partnership with our medical partner and evaluated through a usability study.