Optimizing the arrangement of fixed light modules in new autonomous surgical lighting systems

Abstract

Several novel autonomous lighting systems for illuminating the surgical site (e.g. SmartOT) consist of a large number of swiveling light modules placed on the ceiling instead of two or three movable OR lights. For such a new type of lighting system for operating rooms, the initial placement of the light modules is of great importance, since the light modules cannot be moved during surgery. For this reason, we present a novel approach for optimizing the arrangement of light modules in a new autonomous lighting system that exploits the special characteristics of an operating room and the surgeries that take place there by taking into account occluding geometry (e.g., surgeons and medical staff) via point cloud recordings. We have implemented a function that provides the brightness at the surgical site for an arbitrary arrangement of light modules at a given time of a point cloud recording. Based on this brightness function, we defined a fitness function which we used for optimization. Using cross-validation, we compared the results of three optimization algorithms (Greedy, SGA, SADE) to naive arrangements of light modules. By performing these optimizations on point cloud recordings of nine real open abdominal surgeries, we obtain arrangements that achieve up to 41% higher minimum brightness during surgery compared to naive arrangements.