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GooglePatent applicationHealth & bodyInterest 8/10

Google patents system to spot surgical errors in video

This filing describes a software tool that watches surgical videos to track which step of an operation is happening. It uses a two-step computer vision process to detect if a surgeon skips a required step or causes an injury.

Why it mattersIt could help hospitals catch mistakes during operations in real-time, potentially improving patient safety.

In the filing’s own words

A system and method of identifying an adverse event using a video of a surgery and a two-stage surgical phase recognition module. The method includes receiving, by the module, a video of the surgery, where the video comprises a sequence of video frames. The module comprises a first stage that includes a neural network and a second stage that includes a multi-stage temporal convolution network. The method includes extracting, using the first stage, visual information content of a single frame based on the single frame; identifying, using the second stage, surgical phases captured in the frames of the video based on the visual information content from the first stage; and identifying, using the identified surgical phases, an adverse event during the surgery. An adverse event includes the omission of a surgical phase and an injury to the patient. The identification can occur in real-time or near-real-time.

What exactly they claim (claim 1)

1. A system configured to automatically identify a surgical phase of a surgery captured in a video of the surgery, the system comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of instructions: wherein the surgery comprises a plurality of sequential phases; wherein the video comprises a sequence of video frames; and wherein the instructions are executed with one or more processors so that the following steps are executed: receiving, by a two-stage surgical phase recognition (“SPR”) module, the video of the surgery; wherein the two-stage SPR module comprises a first stage and a second stage; extracting, using a neural network that forms the first stage, visual information content of a single frame based on the single frame; and identifying, using a multi-stage temporal convolution network that forms the second stage, surgical phases captured in the frames of the video based on the visual information content from the first stage; and wherein the two-stage SPR module has been trained using videos of surgeries involving complex anatomies and videos of surgeries involving adverse events.

Facts

Company
Google (VERILY LIFE SCIENCES LLC)
Official title
Computer Vision Based Two-Stage Surgical Phase Recognition Module
Publication number
US20260260488A1
Application number
18869608
Filed
May 24, 2023
Published
Sep 3, 2026
Inventors
9
Claims
20

Classified under

G06V 20/41 Physics & computingG06V 10/62 Physics & computingG06V 10/774 Physics & computingG06V 10/82 Physics & computingG06V 20/44 Physics & computingG06V 20/46 Physics & computing
Read the full filing (official PDF) ↗ Open in the Patent Tracker

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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.