Real Time Issues for usage of Vision and Image Data in the Future Operating Room

The operating room (OR) is more and more equipped with surgical assist systems which make use of modern image acquisition and processing technologies. Within this scenario, the surgeon has to deal with a large amount of information which must be available at the right time and in the right place. This results in various real-time problems which must be addressed while building surgical assist systems. The components of such systems and their real time requirements are presented in this paper. Several concrete systems are presented and their real time properties discussed