Abstracts
2002 Digestive Disease Week

# 102374 Abstract ID: 102374 Laparoscopic Surgery: Digital Long Time Storage and Management of Videos, Still Images and Data
Roberto Campagnacci, Francesco Feliciotti, Alessandro M Paganini, Mario Guerrieri, Angelo De Sanctis, Silvana Perretta, Emanuele Lezoche, Ancona, Italy; San Francisco, CA; Roma, Italy

Since 1997 in our department the digital system Dragonheart ARME (Advance Reseach Medical Electronics, Terni, ITALY) is used to manage videos, still images and patient's data. In our case, this digital system replaced the professional analogic video standards U-Matic and Betacam. Dragonheart is a computer system with an advanced CODEC ( COder/DECoder) DVD2/MPEG6 that allows the capture of 100 hours, extendible until 500 hours, of continous surgical movie.The surgical video can be recorded from an analogical 3 CCD camera ( Y/C compositum signal) or from a digital camera ( fire wire digital input). The resolution standard is 800X600 pixels, 32 bit full screen 50 frames/second. The system is provided of an easy editing software that enable the surgeon to perform a professional level of video editing-production. Multimedia effects ( titles, voice comments ..) are also available. The definitive storage of data ( video, images, ..) is on CD Rom 700 Mb (80 min.) or DVD cartridge. Moreover, also after several years of data storage, Dragoheart system allows a fast and complete search of data previously stored and marked with number or words or comments (video clips, entire movie, patient clinical data, radiological images. pathology images.....). The use of a digital system to manage surgical data has strongly improved our work in this field. Reduction of cost ( self production of movie without necessity of professional broadcasting workers,) multimedia presentation, CD Rom storage (< 1 dollar of cost for each CD Rom) and a wide digital data base are in our experience some of the major advantages of this digital system.