Project 028 – Improving ergonomics and lowering costprice

Medical Camera Design

A manufacturer of specialty medical cameras had a prototype of a 5-channel multi-spectral medical camera which was quite large and heavy. He needed to have this camera redesigned to be less costly and much smaller and lighter than the existing one. Also, a focus mechanism had to be added. He asked me to design the new camera.

This type of camera is used for fluorescence image guided surgery (such as surgical endoscopy), where before an operation, a patient is injected with a tracer substance. This tracer makes the tumor emit infrared light when illuminated by a laser. The multispectral camera can see this this wavelength. A computer can convert this infrared to a bright visible color and show it on a computer screen. This way the surgeon knows where the tumor is located. With the naked eye, not all (small) tumors would have been visible but can now be recognized and removed before more harm is done.

The housing had to fit multiple PCBs and consisted of aluminum and high quality 3D printed parts.

To hold this camera, an additional gripper was engineered. All parts needed to be ergonomic and had to be well manageable even when used inside a sterile plastic sleeve and when held in different orientations.

For this second protoype, existing parts and PCBs needed to be used in the design. It was not possible to make the camera smaller without changing the PCBs. Such a step was only possible after selling a number of these cameras to get more money into the company. Fortunately, these cameras were operating as expected and the clinical test results were very good.

For more information about these cameras, please see here:
Olympus Surgical Technologies / Quest Medical Imaging