RESUMEN

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) techniques are growing in quantity and complexity to cover a wider range of interventions. More specifically, hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery (HALS) involves the use of one surgeon's hand inside the patient whereas the other one manages a single laparoscopic tool. In this scenario, those surgical procedures performed with an additional tool require the aid of an assistant. Furthermore, in the case of a human-robot assistant pairing a fluid communication is mandatory. This human-machine interaction must combine both explicit orders and implicit information from the surgical gestures. In this context, this paper focuses on the development of a hand gesture recognition system for HALS. The recognition is based on a hidden Markov model (HMM) algorithm with an improved automated training step, which can also learn during the online surgical procedure by means of a reinforcement learning process.

Asunto(s)

Laparoscópía Mano-Asistida/métodos , Reconocimiento de Normas Patrones Automatizadas/métodos , Algoritmos , Gestos , Humanos , Procedimientos Quirúrgicos Mínimamente Invasivos/métodos , Robótica

RESUMEN

New wireless technologies make possible the implementation of high level integration wireless devices which allow the replacement of traditional large wired monitoring devices. This kind of devices favours at-home hospitalization, reducing the affluence to sanitary assistance centers to make routine controls. This fact causes a really favourable social impact, especially for elder people, rural-zone inhabitant, chronic patients and handicapped people. Furthermore, it offers new functionalities to physicians and will reduce the sanitary cost. Among these functionalities, biomedical signals can be sent to other devices (screen, PDA, PC...) or processing centers, without restricting the patients' mobility. The aim of this project is the development and implementation of a reduced size multi-channel electrocardiograph based on IEEE 802.11, which allows wireless monitoring of patients, and the insertion of the information into the TCP/IP Hospital network.

RESUMEN

Most of the patients who are in hospitals and, increasingly, patients controlled remotely from their homes, at-home monitoring, are continuously monitored in order to control their evolution. The medical devices used up to now, force the sanitary staff to go to the patients' room to control the biosignals that are being monitored, although in many cases, patients are in perfect conditions. If patient is at home, it is he or she who has to go to the hospital to take the record of the monitored signal. New wireless technologies, such as BlueTooth and WLAN, make possible the deployment of systems that allow the display and storage of those signals in any place where the hospital intranet is accessible. In that way, unnecessary displacements are avoided. This paper presents a network architecture that allows the identification of the biosignal acquisition device as IP network nodes. The system is based on a TCP/IP architecture which is scalable and avoids the deployment of a specific purpose network.