In the November/December 2016 issue of Surgical Products, the winners of this year’s Excellence In Surgical Products (ESP) Awards are revealed.
Day by day, we’ll also share the results here, along with an expanded version of the Surgical Products Q&A that accompanied each winner.
Category: MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGICAL PRODUCTS
Olympus Visera 4K UHD Surgical Video System
Why do you think readers were interested in learning more about the product?
The sale of big screen monitors has become standard in the consumer space over the years. In 2015, the sale of big screen monitors has increased by 10 percent. Despite the growing demand in the consumer space for larger monitors, the average size of a medical grade display is only 26 inches — around half the size of a television in your living room. Olympus and Sony, through a formal joint venture named SOMED, recognized the need to deliver a more immersive experience through 4K Big Screen Surgery. Surgeons and surgical staff no longer have to question why they have better equipment to watch the football game than they do to perform surgery.
(Olympus)
How does this product benefit the surgical team and aid in better outcomes?
Thanks to its increased resolution and brightness, Olympus 4K enables the use of a big screen 55-inch primary operative display. This allows users to physically see anatomical images larger than ever before while having an immersive experience standing just four feet away from the monitor. Olympus 4K gives the surgeon the ability to view a larger and better operating image which can potentially help improve confidence and speed. In addition, the surgical staff is able to use the 4K primary operative display as the single reference point in the operating room, aligning the entire team and providing a unified sense of engagement for all the staff.
What technical innovations does the product encapsulate and apply to the OR?
The Olympus 4K system includes the light source, camera head, scopes, cables, and monitor. This system provides increased brightness, color, and resolution, which differentiate this technology from current HD systems in the OR. The Olympus 4K camera captures brighter images and four times the resolution with the 4K Exmor R sensor. The single 4K Exmor R sensor has twice the sensitivity and less noise than those of HD. In addition, Olympus 4K provides a BT2020 color spectrum throughout the system providing twice the color gamut of HD systems, allowing the Surgeon to observe fine patterns and structures in high precision and to identify finer variations of reds and yellows.
