Video Archiving and Communication System (VACS): A Progressive Approach, Design, Implementation, and Benefits for Surgical Videos

Abstract

Objectives: As endoscopic, laparoscopic, and robotic surgical procedures become more common, surgical videos are increasinglybeing treated as records and serving as important data sources for education, research, and developing new solutionswith recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI). However, most hospitals do not have a system that can store and managesuch videos systematically. This study aimed to develop a system to help doctors manage surgical videos and turn them intocontent and data. Methods: We developed a video archiving and communication system (VACS) to systematically processsurgical videos. The VACS consists of a video capture device called SurgBox and a video archiving system called SurgStory. SurgBox automatically transfers surgical videos recorded in the operating room to SurgStory. SurgStory then analyzes thesurgical videos and indexes important sections or video frames to provide AI reports. It allows doctors to annotate classifiedindexing frames, “data-ize” surgical information, create educational content, and communicate with team members. Results:The VACS collects surgical and procedural videos, and helps users manage archived videos. The accuracy of a convolutionalneural network learning model trained to detect the top five surgical instruments reached 96%. Conclusions: With the adventof the VACS, the informational value of medical videos has increased. It is possible to improve the efficiency of doctors’ continuingeducation by making video-based online learning more active and supporting research using data from medical videos. The VACS is expected to promote the development of new AI-based products and services in surgical and procedural fields.