Patent ID: 7725162
Filing Date: 2010-05-25
Classification: A61B

Abstract:
1. A surgery system, comprising: at least two smart instruments, wherein each smart instrument comprises a housing, a plurality of LEDs coupled with the housing and adapted to fire independently, and a first transceiver; a computer system having a scanning cycle the length of which is dependant on the number of smart instruments to be tracked; and a sensor system adapted to wirelessly sense the position of the at least two smart instruments and to transmit position information to the computer system, wherein the sensor system includes a sensor array comprising a plurality of position sensors and at least a second transceiver; and wherein the surgery system temporarily sets the number of LEDs to be activated on an unused active smart instrument to zero, and wherein during each scanning cycle the surgery system cycles successively through all of the smart instruments and the second transceiver wirelessly transmits an instruction to the first transceiver of each of the smart instruments in consecutive order that have a number of LEDs that have not been set to zero, that causes the LEDs thereof to fire independently one at a time in order to be recognized by the surgery system.