JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Surgical lighting systems provide optimal lighting conditions for the operating room personnel. Current systems are mainly adjusted by hand, where surgeons either accommodate the light themselves or communicate their requirements to an assistant to ensure optimal surgical conditions. This poses challenges to maintaining sterility, proper accessibility, illumination, and potential collision problems. Furthermore, the personnel operating the light may not have deep medical knowledge or equipment expertise. This work introduces a touch-free interaction concept for controlling the surgical lighting system using speech and gestures. In an iterative process utilizing interviews and focus groups with the stakeholders, we conducted two separate user studies -- in a virtual reality setup and a living lab. Our findings suggest that our proposed touch-free interaction concept can enhance surgical conditions and has the potential to replace traditional adjustment methods. We further discuss the implications of designing touch-free interactions for controlling surgical lighting systems.