Touchless Image Control in the IR Suite and Cath Lab

Here is the short answer. Touchless image control in an interventional radiology suite or cath lab means the scrubbed physician navigates reference imaging with hand gestures, from the table, instead of relaying instructions to someone at a workstation. AirTouch does this with a standard RGB camera and software on the existing workstation. It converts gestures into the mouse, keyboard, and touch input the viewer already understands, so there is no integration with the PACS, the hemodynamic system, or the imaging equipment. It is input software, not a medical device.

Why is image navigation a problem in IR and the cath lab?

Image-guided procedures run on images, and the person who needs them most is the one person who cannot touch a mouse. Prior CT, MR, 3D reconstructions, and earlier runs all live on workstations outside the sterile field.

So the physician narrates. "Scroll down. Back two. No, the arterial phase." A technologist or circulator translates those words into clicks, sometimes from a control room on the other side of leaded glass. It works, and it is slow. Every exchange pulls attention away from the patient and the wire.

The alternative is worse. Breaking scrub to look for yourself means regowning and regloving before the procedure can continue.

What do teams use today, and where does it fall short?

• Verbal relay. The default everywhere. Accuracy depends on how well two people share a mental picture of the dataset, and the staff member doing the clicking is not doing anything else.

• Draped mice, keyboards, and touchscreens. Sterile covers keep the field intact, but performance degrades in use. Clicks misfire, scrolling drags, and touch through plastic is imprecise.

• Foot pedals. Reliable for a handful of mapped commands. The floor of an angio suite is already crowded with pedals, and a few commands do not cover window level, series changes, zoom, and 3D rotation.

How does gesture control work at the table?

A camera is mounted with a clear view of where the physician stands, typically on or near the display boom. AirTouch runs on the workstation that drives the reference monitor. A pinch arrives at the viewer as a click. A drag scrolls the stack. Mapped gestures fire the keyboard shortcuts your viewer already uses for window level, zoom, or next series.

Because the viewer only receives standard input, nothing about the clinical software changes. The same setup drives a PACS client, an advanced visualization package, or a browser-based viewer. We cover the viewer side in more depth in touchless PACS control for radiology and on the PACS and medical imaging integration page.

Nothing enters the sterile field. There is no device to drape, hold, or reprocess between cases.

Will a busy room trigger it by accident?

This is the question that sank earlier generations of touchless systems, and it is the one our patent addresses. Patented intent detection identifies the person deliberately controlling the screen and stays with them until they finish. Movement from the scrub tech, the anesthesia team, or a colleague walking past is filtered out in most setups.

Rooms vary. Lighting, lead shields, boom positions, and glove colors all matter, and some environments may call for a specialized camera. Through our partnership with Orbbec, AirTouch also takes advantage of 3D depth sensing and IR cameras when a deployment calls for them. The Orbbec page explains when that is worth considering.

Does it work from the control room, through glass?

A camera tracks hands through observation glass, which keyboards and touchscreens cannot do. Teams use this for displays that sit behind a barrier or for staff who need to drive a screen they cannot reach. Placement and reflections affect results, so it is worth testing in the actual room.

What does IT need to know?

Gesture inference runs on the workstation, and camera video is processed locally. AirTouch runs on Windows and Linux. Because it is computer input software rather than a medical device, it generally moves through the IT review path. Enterprise deployments add on-prem options, a signed DPA, and SLA.

Where to start

Medical teams almost always start with a demo against their own environment, because the real questions are specific: your room, your gloves, your viewer's shortcuts. Book a demo and bring the hardest room you have. If you want to feel the interaction first, start a free trial on any workstation with a webcam.

Related: gesture control for medical environments, touchless control in the sterile operating room, and gesture control and hand tracking software.