Kenta Hori

Embedded Ubiquitous Services on Hospital Information Systems

Hospital information systems (HIS) have turned a hospital into a gigantic computer with huge computational power, huge storage, and wired/wireless local area network. On the other hand, a modern medical device, such as echograph, is a computer system with several functional units connected by an internal network named a bus. Therefore, we can embed such a medical device into the HIS by simply replacing the bus with the local area network. This paper designed and developed two embedded systems, a ubiquitous echograph system, and a networked digital camera. Evaluations of the developed systems clearly show that the proposed approach, embedding existing clinical systems into HIS, drastically changes productivity in the clinical field. Once a clinical system becomes a pluggable unit for a gigantic computer system, HIS, the combination of multiple embedded systems with application software designed under deep consideration about clinical processes may lead to the emergence of disruptive innovation in the clinical field.

Tele-auscultation support system with mixed reality navigation

The aim of this research is to develop an information support system for tele-auscultation. In auscultation, a doctor requires to understand condition of applying a stethoscope, in addition to auscultatory sounds. The proposed system includes intuitive navigation system of stethoscope operation, in addition to conventional audio streaming system of auscultatory sounds and conventional video conferencing system for telecommunication. Mixed reality technology is applied for intuitive navigation of the stethoscope. Information, such as position, contact condition and breath, is overlaid on a view of the patients chest. The contact condition of the stethoscope is measured by e-textile contact sensors. The breath is measured by a band type breath sensor. In a simulated tele-auscultation experiment, the stethoscope with the contact sensors and the breath sensor were evaluated. The results show that the presentation of the contact condition was not understandable enough for navigating the stethoscope handling. The time series of the breath phases was usable for the remote doctor to understand the breath condition of the patient.

Improving Precise Positioning of Surgical Robotic Instruments by a Three-Side-View Presentation System on Telesurgery

For faultless collaboration among the surgeon, surgical staffs, and surgical robots in telesurgery, communication must include environmental information of the remote operating room, such as behavior of robots and staffs, vital information of a patient, named supporting information, in addition to view of surgical field. “Surgical Cockpit System,” which is a telesurgery support system that has been developed by the authors, is mainly focused on supporting information exchange between remote sites. Live video presentation is important technology for Surgical Cockpit System. Visualization method to give precise location/posture of surgical instruments is indispensable for accurate control and faultless operation. In this paper, the authors propose three-side-view presentation method for precise location/posture control of surgical instruments in telesurgery. The experimental results show that the proposed method improved accurate positioning of a telemanipulator.

Designing Smooth Communication Environment for Telemedicine for General Practitioner

Today’s rapid advancement of the information and communication technologies enables us to perform telemedicine over the information networks. However, the realtime telemedicine is still not widely performed as a routine clinical activity. The authors developed a prototype multimedia communication system to support the realtime telemedicine and evaluated communication and technical barriers through protocol analysis. The results tell that ill synchronization and lack of non-verbal information may harm diagnostic process although the prototype enables general practitioners to diagnose a new patient from a remote site.

Effect of video streaming delay on telemedicine based on the surgical cockpit system

Live video streaming technology is indispensable for collaboration on telemedicine. The live video streaming technology plays important roles for tele-operation and tele-communication between a tele-operating console room and a remote operating room. However, network transmission delay is unavoidable problem in live video streaming technology. The main theme of the research is to evaluate effect of live video streaming delay for robot drivability and mental effect of given view in telesurgery. Target-pointing task was performed via tele-operating master-slave manipulator in the Surgical Cockpit System. The subjects were 27 of 5th grade medical students that had no experience of tele-robot manipulation. Drivability of a robot was measured by physically and sensory evaluation. Mental effect of given view was measured by sensory evaluation. Video-streaming delay declined accuracy of robot motion control and reduced speed of tele-robot operation. The subjects felt incongruous sense of given view, difficulty of robot control, and uneasiness of spatial recognition under video delayed condition. The video presentation with approximately 0.5 seconds of live video streaming delay causes stresses and strains of a tele-operating surgeon for delicate manipulation of a tele-surgery robot.