Print Email Facebook Twitter Instrument Tracking in the Operating Room Title Instrument Tracking in the Operating Room: Optimization of RFID tag performance Author Haring, Marielle (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) Contributor van den Dobbelsteen, John (mentor) Meeuwsen, Frédérique (mentor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Mechanical Engineering Date 2018-08-22 Abstract In hospitals, the duration of surgical procedures vary even when the same procedure is performed.Surgical end-time of the procedure is currently predicted using historical data about similar procedures,the procedure time and sometimes an indication of the operating surgeon is also taken into account.After the start of the procedure, there is no documented communication between the operating room(OR) planner and the surgical team inside the OR. When the procedure is finished, a nurse has to call toinform that the next patient can be prepared for surgery. If an update of the progress of the procedureis needed, there has to be communication between the staff outside the OR and the surgical team insidethe OR. To lower the workload and reduce the distractions for the surgical staff, the communicationneeds to be automated. This can be done by developing a support system that communicates theprogress of the procedure in the OR automatically to the staff outside the OR without the need forhuman interaction.In this study, automatically communicating the progress of the procedure is realized by introducing aradio frequency identification (RFID) system that tracks the instruments during the procedure. Withthis information, the different phases of the procedure can be recognized and this will aid in thecommunication and the prediction of the surgical end-time. To be able to detect the instruments withan RFID system, a minimal reading distance is required. In this study, different approaches are testedto increase the maximal reading distance of RFID ’on-metal’ tags to ensure the range is far enoughfor the technique to be used during a totally extraperitoneal (TEP) procedure in the OR. The desiredreading distance is 50 cm. The study started with a set of instruments with RFID tags attached to them.In a pilot study, the reading distances were measured and resulted in an average reading distance fromthe antenna which was too low. Using a larger antenna resulted in a slightly higher average readingdistance, but still not high enough. Raising the power of the antenna could be increasing the readingdistance. The tests are, however, already performed with the maximally allowed 2 W.To determine the problem with the reading distance, the different properties of the attachment of theRFID tag to the instruments are investigated. The influences of the different properties are tested andthe results are combined to make a final design that is supposed to have a higher maximal readingdistance than the instruments in the pilot study. The final design is tested both in the clinical lab at theTU Delft and in an operating room at the Reinier de Graaf hospital in Voorburg. The reading distancesof the tags on the final design were improved and sufficient for the use in a TEP procedure. Finally, thetags are attached to three instruments with a temporary connection to measure the reading distanceswith the influences of the instruments. The results of this test show that the desired reading distancescan be accomplished with RFID technology. Subject RFIDInstrument trackingOperating room To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fa4adcaa-8d41-44e4-99e2-8ab7594b8761 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2018 Marielle Haring Files PDF Master_Thesis_Marielle_Haring.pdf 24.22 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:fa4adcaa-8d41-44e4-99e2-8ab7594b8761/datastream/OBJ/view