Image Navigation and Manipulation in the Operating Room using Hand Gesture Recognition

Abstract

In the operating room, computer-aided navigation systems are used by the surgeon to view medical images during surgery. But since sterility must be maintained at all times to prevent disease transmission and spread of infections, the surgeon cannot use the mouse, keyboard or any other controller devices in cases where there are several images that need to be viewed or if there is a need to manipulate images. In order to provide a sterile and natural human-computer interaction, this paper presents a gesture-controlled image navigation and manipulation application that uses hand gesture recognition and the computer vision capabilities of the Kinect sensor to allow the surgeon to perform navigation and manipulation on medical images.