Abdominal View Expansion by Retractable Camera

Recently, minimally invasive surgery such as laparoscopic surgery is highly recommended to improve the quality of life (QOL) of patients after surgery. However, the laparoscopic surgery could be a mental and/or physical stressor to surgeons. To overcome this problem, we have proposed a computer-assisted laparoscopy system that matches the surgeon’s visual axis and the direction of operative field by projecting the laparoscopic image directly onto the abdominal surface of the patient. The final goal of this study is to establish a pseudotransparent laparoscopy system. Therefore, in this study, we propose a novel trocar system with a retractable camera unit, which can provide additional view to surgeons without the need for additional ports. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed system, the proposed trocar system was inserted into a porcine abdominal cavity under laparoscopic guidance and it was confirmed that the retractable action of the camera unit was smooth and safe. We also confirmed that the wide field of view was successfully obtained by a dry box experiment.