Abstract: Various of the disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for processing surgical data to facilitate further downstream operations. For example, some embodiments may include machine learning systems trained to recognize whether video from surgical visualization tools, such as endoscopes, depicts a field of view inside or outside the patient body. The system may excise or whiteout frames of video appearing outside the patient so as to remove potentially compromising personal information, such as the identities of members of the surgical team, the patients identity, configurations of the surgical theater, etc. Appropriate removal of such non-surgical data may facilitate downstream processing, e.g., by complying with regulatory requirements as well as by removing extraneous data potentially inimical to further downstream processing, such as training a downstream classifier.