

Doctor performs surgery using Google Glass [video] - mbm
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/10/uab_surgeon_performs_surgery_u.html

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dobbsbob
A Syrian surgeon in Edmonton has been doing remote surgery in clandestine
hospitals he set up in Aleppo and Northern Syria for a year now. He uses Skype
and there are multiple cameras set up.
[http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.1341329](http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.1341329)
he claimed to have done a lot of virtual leg and hand surgeries in a more
recent vid if you google his name.

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DaniFong
I hope I'm not the only person terrified about the lag/fidelity on Skype for
surgery!

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jaysonelliot
I've had my Google Glass for about a week now, and this raises some questions
for me.

How long did the surgery last? My experience so far is that you can get a
maximum of about one hour battery life from Glass when using video.

Was the resolution and video quality sufficient for the remote surgeon to
really see what was going on? Again, personal experience only, but everyone
I've made a video call with over Glass has reported very choppy low-res
streams.

I'd love a lot more details on the procedure, what went right and what could
have worked better, and just how it was done. "This thing happened" isn't a
lot of useful information.

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mbm
So the surgery lasted about two hours. We used a 7000 mAh battery pack, since
without external battery Glass would make it about 25-30 minutes in the
Hangout before going dark.

The resolution was good enough for the remote proctor to assist. We did notice
that as the device got warm as the surgery progressed, quality seemed to
decrease a little. Overall I think we were really pleased though with the
reliability and quality; we didn't experience any drops, or much packet loss
or jitter.

I would say the biggest hurdle was audio. Because the version of Glass we used
relied on bone conduction and didn't have an available earpiece, it made it
pretty difficult at times for the surgeon to hear his remote proctor,
especially since there was a lot of sawing and suction going on.

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jaysonelliot
Thanks for the details. I'm very surprised that you were able to do the
surgery without an earpiece. I can't even understand what someone's saying to
me when I'm in the grocery store, the bone conduction is so quiet.

If there's a more detailed report of the event up anytime, please share. It's
fascinating stuff.

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robryk
Can Google Glass overlay its overlay over more than the small rectangly in the
upper right corner? I thought not, but they seem to imply that it does (the
overlay for the operating surgeon is provided by Google Glass).

I'm also slightly surprised that there are no focus problems: the Glass
display is made so that it appears to be significantly further away than
40-50cm that you have between the surgeon and the operating field.

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zatara
I had exactly the same doubt, the setup requires a see-through augmented
reality display, which does not seem to be the case with Google Glass. I would
love to be wrong though.

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fiatmoney
I'm imagining something like this:

[http://www.surgeonsimulator2013.com](http://www.surgeonsimulator2013.com)

Which would actually be pretty fun as a VR app.

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rossmiller
How was Google Glass necessary, or even preferred, for this application over a
normal computer & monitor setup? I can't seem to make that out from the
article.

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jameskilton
I would assume because it's right in the actual surgeon's view instead of
requiring constantly moving the head to look at the monitor, then look at the
patient.

Better title would probably be "First Ever Virtual/Augmented Reality Assisted
Surgery"

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rossmiller
Ah, for some reason I was imagining this on the side of the remote expert
rather than the surgeon in the surgery room. Makes a lot more sense, now!

