Video Over IP Permits South Pole Surgery

Henry Malmgren writes "Last week at the South Pole research station, we successfully completed knee surgery using a video over IP link back to the United States. The article is light on technical details, but what we did was to use a Polycom VTC unit to send a video signal to Raytheon Polar Services HQ in Colorado. Our signal went primarily over a Marisat satellite at T1 speeds, and then HQ redistributed the video to Boston via a dedicated ISDN line. We had signal problems several times during the transmission with Marisat, so we had to switch to a NASA TDRS satellite towards the end of the surgery. We also used an Iridium phone as a voice backup for the times when we couldn't get decent quality over either bird. During the surgery there were three cameras that we used to send back video to the states. One was the built in camera on the VTC unit, a second was a handheld Sony 8mm unit, and a third was a black and white "Doc Cam". This was a head mounted camera with a LED light unit that was built on station by our Senior Communications Technican, Jon Berry. This allowed the transmission of video from the Doctor's perspective. Unfortunately, while the Doc cam worked great locally, and we got great recordings of the surgery from it, it didn't work well over the satellite link. The camera view jumped around so much that it didn't compress well over the satellite link. The best video was obtained by putting the hand held camera on a tall tripod which was able to look directly into the surgical wound."

Comments

Breast Cancer

[dextr0us]

I cannot remember the particulars, but this is quite an innovation since the last major medical emergency in the south pole. A scientist had breast cancer, and she ended up performing self chemo on herself. Imagine if they had this technology a few years sooner! Usually on slashdot all we hear is the typical Linux yaddyaddayadda (not that i dont appreciate that), but it is nice to hear such a great use of technology

Re:Breast Cancer

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The last one wasn't breast cancer. It was a heart attack. I know, I was there.

Dr. Ron was airlifted out in the dark. That's a first - it's never, ever been done before.

We had a satellite link with Swedish Medical at the time. Streamed ultrasound images to them and talked via Iridium. I know this, 'cause I set it up.

It got zip media coverage as compared to the "breast cancer" story (which stinks to high heaven).

Re:That sure is a lot of work.. for.. nothing?

[Moofie]

Well, let's see...except for the facts that the surgery in the article was to repair a damaged tendon, and was not performed using arthroscopic techniques, and was not related to osteoarthritis, you're right on the money.

Oh wait, no you're not.

ISDN vs T1??

[MikeyO]

So they had a wireless T1 link at the south pole and The best they could do in Boston was ISDN??? Maybe i should move to the Sou1th Pole, if the wireless offerings are that good!!

Amazing, but... "IP" part irrelevent?

[tlambert]

I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been more telesurgery experiments; I find the whole idea fascinating, and that the process can be made to work at all really amazing and impressive.

But I think that the referenced article had a better take on it than this posting, whose "additional technical details" are, at best, unintentionally misleading.

The implication of "video over IP" is that you did this over the public IP network, which in fact is not the case.

The fact that you did this over what was effectively a dedicated point-to-point link means that the use of the IP transport was irrelevant (worse; it added unnecessary overhead, subtracting from the total data rate).

I understand not wanting to risk someone's knee on a link succeptible to a DOS (or only succeptible as a result of a substantial investment of effort on the part of the attacker). But your posting implies that this is something which took place over the public Internet, or *could* take place over the public Internet, when it's not.

-- Terry

Ahhhhhh

[gvonk]

You had me at "T1 over satellite."

So what'd he build it outa, Duct tape?

[Darby]

This was a head mounted camera with a LED light unit that was built on station by our Senior Communications Technican, Jon Berry.

Now this is a Capital G Geek in the best of all possible meanings.
"You wanna what? OK, I got some LEDs and shit...(madly digging through toolbox).Some wires hmmm.. soldering iron over here. Right on surgical lamp, heh. One of these days you'll come up with a challenge for me. Hey, when you're done with the surgery, can we keep the T1 satellite link up for a few. I have some .... uh... important stuff to frag^H^H^H^H do.

Seriously, there's a guy who actually earned the "Senior" in his title.

The most important thing

[manseman]

Now the surgeon can scratch his ass as much as he likes during surgery without having to wash his hands and change gloves.

Necessity is the mother of invention

[Pedrito]

And so, this is the second time they've needed remote medical help because the doctor there wasn't capable of handling the job themselves. Seems to me that this will necessarily lead to the creation of the EMH (Emergency Medical Hologram). These South Pole people really need to talk to the Star Trek people and get to work.

IP != Internet

[Cato]

IP doesn't imply the Internet, of course.

IP was probably chosen because you could get an end to end link (most likely Ethernet at both ends of the satellite link). Satellite networks do clever things with TCP to make it work better on their high-latency links. Most video apps will be IP based these days, or require a single layer 2 (such as ISDN) end to end, which is restrictive.

"Ingrid on Ice" - a doctor's diary in antarctica

[MeerCat]

If you want to know more about life in antarctica, and the realities of being a doctor, a friend of mine resigned a top surgeon's job to spend a year in antartica as medical officer (plus dentist, plus hairdresser).

Great diary, the real issues of life at the south pole, great photos... have a read of Ingrid On Ice