Features in detail Real-time acquisition: Record highly compressed video in continuous mode, with a minimal size on disk, ideal for storage: 'archiving quality' Acquire simultaneously a number of high quality clips and stills for use in presentations or for documentation: 'presentation quality' Add a personal text string, date and time, a watermark, ... to the video data and stills. Enhance the video quality by extended filtering. (e.g. brightness/contrast, noise reduction, ...) Record to hard disk and CD/DVD simultaneously. Finish working and have a 'ready to distribute' video on a portable medium, and a personal copy on hard disk. Direct control of acquisition by the surgeon with a wireless mouse (simplified operation: no need to click on a specific button), a foot pedal, the buttons on the camera head... A version with medical touchscreen is available also.
	Enhanced playback: Watch a video in accelerated mode, or navigate using 'video markers' (one for every still acquired). Annotate video markers: add textual comments to a marker. These comments will become visible when the video arrives at the position of the marker. Markers and comments are also available in the media player. Postprocess and/or recompress any video footage All recorded data is fully compatible and portable to other video players. Save screenshots, send high quality printouts to a desktop or video printer. Printing can be done automatically at the moment of acquiring the pictures. ...
	Configurable: Nebula is a highly configurable tool, but extremely easy to operate if used out of the box. It is supported by an enthusiastic team of developers. Define personal compression levels for 'archiving quality' vs. 'presentation quality' , choose an alternative video format (mpeg, quicktime, avi) or codec, etc ... Although no configuration is required to use Nebula, you are not forced to use the default configurations. The software can also be tailored to even better suit your needs.

Flexible acquisition

The acquisition, recording and archiving of medical video sequences and still pictures is becoming a standard procedure in many medical disciplines. Extended visual documentation, together with the possibility to review procedures can not only facilitate your work, but also serves as a solid base for medico-legal documentation. Moreover, added value for the patient results when s/he can revise extracts from a procedure (e.g. an echo). Finally, video data and pictures are becoming inevitable footage for presentations and training sessions.

Nebula is a unique medical registration unit which combines the ease-of-use with a flexible portable storage. Nebula offers an integral solution and can capture any digital or analog signal using a standard laptop or desktop computer. It stores your data on hard disk, simultaneously it can burn a secondary copy on cd or dvd and can provide the data to a medical archiving system. Nebula, the digital video acquisition and archiving tool, combines versatility during acquisition with a search engine permitting to retrieve sequences, while using reasonable amount of storage space only.

Process on-the-fly

Acquisition of video and picture data is only a first step. All data can be processed while being acquired, or alternatively during a postprocessing step. Add an irremovable watermark to videos for distribution, or a timeline and text string, adjust brightness, …

Some of the processing runs behind the scenes:
First, Nebula can add an invisible signature to a video, which allows you to identify your videos at any later time. Your videos are invisibly personalized. Nebula however can recognize such a signature.
Secondly, Nebula can provide you with a proof of authenticity. This feature tells you if a video file has been changed or not, and provides some supplementary information such as the recording time and date.

Top, left to right: input image; automatic addition of initials, date and hour; brightness contrast correction; image color equalisation Bottom, left to right: noise suppresion and sharpening; image flip; watermarking of the videodata

Dual mode simultaneous storage

Video acquisition poses an inherent problem: archiving on tape or dvd only is impractical and it becomes virtually impossible to still manage your data. Alternatively digital archiving of all video footage would ask for extremely large hard disks. Nebula offers a unique solution by permitting to store data simultaneously in two qualities, i.e. archiving quality and presentation quality. In archiving quality some 4h of video fits on a regular 700 MB cd. In presentation quality the space required is about four times as large. This unique dual storage possibility allows to record a procedure continuously in archiving quality, while important sequences can be recorded simultaneously in presentation quality. Acquire the data in the quality you need since compression rate of both archiving and presentation quality can be changed as you wish. Obviously still pictures can always be acquired.

Enhanced playback

All data is fully compatible with most third party players. Playback within Nebula offers additionally accelerated or slow motion revision of videos (1-30 x), and navigation to 'time markers' in the video. Every still picture acquired, stores such a navigation point, and greatly facilitates finding back an interesting sequence within a file of several hours. Markers can be added and removed. Additionally these markers can be annotated with short text messages. These will show at the corresponding point within the video file.

Configurable and supported

Nebula is highly configurable if desired, but extremely easy to use if used out of the box. It comes with extended online support. Customisation, or integration with third party systems are possible.