Medical System

Is remote surgery lagging and 4K image transmission slow?

In 2023, during a remote surgery demonstration across provinces at a tertiary hospital, the screen suddenly froze for 3 seconds. The main knife expert had to pause the operation and wait for the signal to be restored. Although the surgery was successfully completed in the end, the 3-second delay made everyone present sweat profusely.

This is not an isolated case.

With the popularization of technologies such as 4K/8K endoscopes, ultra high definition pathological imaging, and remote surgical robots, medical data is growing at an explosive rate. A digital pathology slice can reach 10GB, a 4K surgical live stream requires a stable bandwidth of over 50Mbps, and remote surgery has even more stringent end-to-end latency requirements, reaching milliseconds - beyond 100 milliseconds, doctors cannot obtain real-time force feedback, and surgical risks increase sharply.

Traditional copper wire is becoming the biggest bottleneck in the development of smart healthcare

And fiber optic cables provide the answer.

Nowadays, high-definition endoscopes, surgical microscopes, and digital pathology scanners are pushing medical imaging from "standard definition" to "ultra high definition". 4K resolution is 4 times higher than 1080p, and 8K resolution is even 16 times higher. Each frame carries more details - vascular texture, tissue boundaries, cell morphology - which directly affect diagnostic accuracy and surgical safety.

Moreover, the bandwidth requirement for a 4k surgical live broadcast is 50-100Mbps; The bandwidth requirement for an 8K surgical live broadcast is above 200Mbps; Not only that: the data volume of a digital pathology slice is 5-10GB.

When they are working alone, copper wires can transmit with ease, but when multiple departments are simultaneously conducting remote consultations, surgical live broadcasts, and image retrieval, traditional copper wires may appear inadequate. It can cause problems such as screen lag, slow loading, and operation delay.

These issues are safety red lines for medical surgery. In this developed era, there are already many chief surgeons who control surgical robots thousands of miles away through the control panel, and the robotic arm accurately reproduces every movement of the doctor.

But remote surgery has extremely strict requirements for transmission speed:

1.If the transmission delay of the devices on both ends is greater than 100 milliseconds, it will cause operational loss of control;  

2. The transmission bandwidth should be greater than 50Mbps so that the image is stable and details are not lost;

3. The availability should reach 99.999%, as disconnection is equivalent to risk;

Traditional copper cables cannot meet these requirements in terms of distance, bandwidth, and anti-interference ability. After reaching a certain distance, the signal of copper cables begins to decay.

In contrast, the reason why optical fiber cables can become the main "information highway" for healthcare is due to their three core advantages:

The propagation speed of optical signals in optical fibers is about 200 meters per microsecond. This means that the one-way transmission time of optical signals from Beijing to Shanghai is only 6 milliseconds. Combined with processing delays such as encoding and decoding, routing and switching, the end-to-end total delay can be easily controlled within 30-50 milliseconds - much lower than the 100 millisecond red line for remote surgery.

1.The electrical signal transmission speed of copper cable is about 2/3 of that of light, and it is affected by electromagnetic interference, resulting in higher actual delay and error rate.

2. Stable transmission over long distances: Fiber optic cables can be used for stable transmission up to 50m without signal attenuation.

3. The available bandwidth of fiber optic cables far exceeds that of copper cables. The current mainstream 10G PON can easily provide 10 Gigabit bandwidth, and 25G, 50G, and 100G PON technologies have also matured for commercial use.

This bandwidth means that 20 4K surgical live streams can be transmitted simultaneously without interfering with each other; A 10GB pathological slice, loaded in 1 second; Multiple departments can access cloud based images simultaneously without waiting in line.

Meanwhile, in a medical robotic arm, there is another most concerning aspect of electricity usage: the durability of cables

In the medical operating room, the duration of surgery varies, and in difficult surgeries, it may take up to 8 hours. During this process, the medical robotic arm may be used tens of thousands of times, and the bending of the optical fiber cable can reach tens of thousands of times.

In the face of special medical environments, temperatures may reach 60 to 70 degrees Celsius, and ordinary cable covers and chips cannot be used for a long time in such environments. And the exterior of phoossno has this characteristic of high temperature resistance, which can be used for a long time in environments above 65 degrees Celsius and as low as minus tens of degrees Celsius; Meanwhile, Phoossno also has this special chip, which differs from ordinary chips in that general chips can only be used at temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius, while Phoossno's unique chip can be used for a long time at temperatures up to 70 degrees Celsius.

Therefore, from force perception, shape perception, tactile perception, to laser ablation and rehabilitation training, optical fibers are penetrating every key link of medical robotic arms.

Why fiber optic?

Thin: The diameter can be reduced to below 0.5mm, making millimeter level surgical instruments possible
Soft: can be repeatedly bent to adapt to the complex cavity structure of the human body
Ling: One optical fiber can simultaneously perceive multidimensional information such as force, temperature, shape, etc
An: Metal free, non-conductive, not affected by electromagnetic interference, safe to use under MRI
Durability: Can withstand high temperature sterilization at 180 ° C, meeting clinical reuse needs

It can be foreseen that with the continuous advancement of fiber optic sensing technology and micro nano manufacturing processes, the combination of "fiber optic+medical robotic arm" will give rise to more breakthrough minimally invasive surgical solutions.

When optical fibers become the "nerves" and "muscles" of robotic arms, the precision and minimally invasive nature of surgical procedures will reach new heights.

Of course, when facing different environments, phoossno will have different characteristic solutions that are perfectly adapted to the corresponding scenarios. If you have such needs, you can contact us and we will develop a solution that is perfectly adapted to you.