On December 11th in 2013, SURFnet, UMC Utrecht, RUG, Plus Vorm and Waag performed their first, worldwide educational application of 4K to live surgery.
A dedicated team of specialists streamed footage from three surgical ear operations at the UMC Utrecht in high resolution to two lecture rooms (one nearby and one over 150 kilometres away in Groningen). Medical specialists and students were able to follow the surgery in 4K, and could communicate directly with each other via secure video conferencing connections. A dedicated light path was used between Utrecht and Groningen to ensure an uninterrupted transmission and patient privacy.
In this publication, we have gathered the experiences and lessons learned from the project partners to aid in the understanding, reproduction, and scaling of the experiment.
