A system for assisting a surgeon to perform an operation on a patient wheresurgeonemploys a first surgical instrument that has a shaft and a tip. The systeminclude a videocapture device configured to capture real-time video data showing the firstsurgicalinstrument while the first surgical instrument is being used by the surgeon toperform theoperation. The system also includes a display device and a computer processor.Thecomputer processor is configured to receive real-time video data from thevideo capturedevice as a sequence of digital image frames and, for each image frame,analyze theimage frame to determine the location in the image frame of the shaft of thefirst surgicalinstrument, process the image frame to overlay received overlay information onthe shaftof the first surgical instrument as it appears in the image frame, and displaythe processedimage frame on the display device.
