Virtual Training of Surgery Staff for Hand Washing Procedure

This work concerns the development of a virtual training application in the medical field; it is based on augmented reality and image analysis techniques. Specifically, we tackled the problem of instructing the surgery staff to follow correctly the hand washing procedure necessary before accessing the operating theater, and of monitoring the correctness of the procedure performed by the physicians. This procedure is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is adopted by all health institutions of civilized countries. Lack of strict fulfillment of this recommendation is one of the major causes of infection risk in the operating rooms. By segmenting the scene captured by a webcam and by using image analysis tools, we detect the position of the forearms of the surgeon with respect to the basin and the water flow, and identify the beginning and the end of each phase of the hand washing procedure performed by the surgeon. The correct execution of the various phases, performed by a puppet in 3D, is projected so as to overlap the real scene captured by the webcam, while the correct procedure is also displayed as text. The application is developed under the supervision of the Risk-Management Department of the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan, Italy, and is designed to be used within the Surgical Care Area, directly in the washing area.