How to avoid artifacts in surgical images

A good video integration system should enable you to stream the raw, original content, meaning no compression (in any shape or form) takes place. Because uncompressed video is pixel-perfect, nothing is lost due to compression artifacts – and nothing is added. So there is no quality loss when transferring images, whether inside or between operating rooms.

Uncompressed vs compressed

Uncompressed streaming can be done by distributing images and video over the IP network, even in the case of secondary distribution. This happens when video content is not directly routed from source to display, but goes to a device for recording or image processing (e.g. for evaluation of a surgical procedure). When that video content has been compressed, it means the initial source material is irreversible burdened, leading to artifacts in the image.  

Though there are various forms of compression (this will be covered in a next blog post), only uncompressed images are pixel-perfect. Just think of the copy machine that makes copies of copies: the first copy looks OK, but the quality of the second one starts to degrade. 

Without compression, images always look how they’re supposed to look. Nowhere else is this more important than in the field of healthcare imaging, where critical decisions are made based on images every day.