The Brandenburg Heart Center, a well-reputed hospital in Bernau, Germany, has been organizing its ‘Tag des Herzzentrums’ for over 20 years now. During each year’s Open Day, healthcare professionals from around Europe gain new insights into cardiac procedures and heart surgeries. In 2014, Belgian multimedia production company mediAVentures treated them to a technological first too: real-time images of heart surgery in full 4K!
Truly groundbreaking
MediAVentures is an acknowledged expert in the technical production of medical educational events and live case demonstrations. Live surgery transmissions is one of its specialties. “We’ve been helping the Bernau congress to get its message across for several years now,” explains Wim Van Renterghem, mediAVentures' CEO and a medical doctor himself. “Year after year, we try to do something new from a conceptual or technological point of view.” What mediAVentures managed to do in 2014 was truly groundbreaking: the images of a heart operation were filmed live in Ultra HD at the Heart Center, streamed and then projected in 4K.
A totally new approach
“We installed multiple broadcast quality cameras in the operating rooms, had signal management completely in UltraHD/4K, video mixing and signal transmission over fiber. At the gymnasium, where congress participants were following the operation, we then projected the images with a Barco HDQ-4K35 projector. The set-up was challenging, both from a technological and artistic point of view. After all, 4K imaging requires different handling of cameras, a different way of mixing the images (equipment, possibilities), etc.” Yet they pulled it off. The event was streamed live on the website of Handelsblatt, Germany's most important business newspaper and Tagesspiegel, the leading regional newspaper, leaving both event participants and online viewers in awe about the power of 4K.
