Emphasizing mesenteric blood vessels in laparoscopic colon cancer surgery video images

This study aims to reduce surgeon burden by emphasising mesenteric blood vessels buried in the mesentery using image processing techniques.We have developed an image processing system that can be connected to a laparoscope. The first step of the method is superficial vessel deletion using an opening process. Next, the mesenteric blood vessels are extracted by multiple regression analysis using hue, saturation, and value color space information in the image. Finally, the enhanced regions are determined by areas obtained by a labeling process. Although examples with both true and false positives are observed, the proposed technique demonstrates sufficient accuracy.