Documentation is an essential part of endoscopic procedures. Almost all Richard Wolf endoscopes are already HDTV-capable and can therefore serve all disciplines in medicine.
Unfortunately the documentation systems for recording, sharing and rendering of high-resolution signals are usually extremely expensive and have limited functions. In surgical operations the legal obligations of documentation must be fulfilled, which asks for a practice-oriented and simple solution. Medical science, however, needs high-quality images that are required for teaching purposes, further training of surgeons and research.
The equipment used in the daily medical routine is far from optimal: in most cases a conventional tape video recorder is used for documentation and archiving, or digital recording.
Images are stored digitally and videos are burt onto a CD or DVD.  

1. Both procedures have their downside: magnetic tapes require a lot of space, time and money, and finding special sequences represents a nearly unsurmountable problem for the user. In addition, tapes cannot be stored for the time period required by law, because the metal oxide layer flakes off over time destroying the tape.
2. The disadvantage of DVDs is the MPEG-2 video compression procedure which causes details important for medical appraisal to be lost. The results of the MPEG-1 compression are even worse.

Modern HD documentation systems are based on PC technology and some are rather  complicated in their use. It becomes obvious that during the development the engineers did not sufficiently focus on the operator in the endoscopic operating room. The result is "Designed by technicians for technicians".
Richard Wolf will soon offer a solution to the aforementioned problems. It will be a compact and easy-to-use Full-HD archiving system that will provide future-oriented potential for endoscopic video recording in HD quality.