Endoscopic procedures control using speech recognition

Abstract

In this paper it is presented a solution for replacing the current endoscopic exams control mechanisms. This kind of exams require the gastroenterologist to perform a complex procedure, using both hands simultaneously, to manipulate the endoscope’s buttons and using the foot to press a pedal in order to perform simple tasks such as capturing frames. The last procedure cannot be accomplished in real-time because the gastroenterologist needs to press an additional programmable button on the endoscope to freeze the image and then press the pedal to capture and save the frame. The presented solution replaces the pedal with a hands-free voice control module and it is capable of running on the background continuously without human physical intervention. This system was designed to be used seamlessly with the MyEndoscopy system that is being tested in some healthcare institution and uses the PocketSphinx libraries to perform real-time recognition of a small vocabulary in two different languages, namely English and Portuguese.