The striving for cognitive operating rooms (OR) and their optimization towards patient safety and room occupancy raises the importance of detailed assessments of various data, which is available in the OR. In order to model surgical workflows it is necessary to acquire the actions of the surgical staff and the data from peripheral devices, surgical lights, operating tables as well as further information present in the OR. In this work, we present a centralized framework, which allows on the one hand the assessment and visualization of various device- and sensor information in real-time and on the other hand additional human workflow annotations in a collaborative manner during the operation. The network based system is fully integrated in a clinical OR and able to record data of the most principle devices during laparoscopic surgeries. Additional information assessed by human observers can be annotated easily via a web-based frontend in real-time on any handheld device like tablets or laptops. Due to its modular design the system is under constant development to expand its scope regarding further devices, sensors and manual annotation possibilities.

This paper describes first steps towards a Superman-like X-ray vision where a brain-computer interface (BCI) device and a gaze-tracker are used to allow the user controlling the augmented reality (AR) visualization. A BCI device is integrated into two medical AR systems. To assess the potential of this technology first feedback from medical doctors is gathered. While in this pilot study not the full range of available signals but only electromyographic signals are used, the medical doctors provided very positive feedback on the use of BCI for medical AR.