A study on the theoretical and practical accuracy of conoscopic holography-based surface measurements -- Toward image registration in minimally invasive surgery
International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 9 (2), pp. 190–203, 2013
Abstract
Background
Registered medical images can assist with surgical navigation and enable image-guided therapy delivery. In soft tissues, surface-based registration is often used and can be facilitated by laser surface scanning. Tracked conoscopic holography (which provides distance measurements) has been recently proposed as a minimally invasive way to obtain surface scans. Moving this technique from concept to clinical use requires a rigorous accuracy evaluation, which is the purpose of our paper.
Methods
We adapt recent non-homogeneous and anisotropic point-based registration results to provide a theoretical framework for predicting the accuracy of tracked distance measurement systems. Experiments are conducted a complex objects of defined geometry, an anthropomorphic kidney phantom and a human cadaver kidney.
Results
Experiments agree with model predictions, producing point RMS errors consistently < 1 mm, surface-based registration with mean closest point error < 1 mm in the phantom and a RMS target registration error of 0.8 mm in the human cadaver kidney.
Conclusions
Tracked conoscopic holography is clinically viable; it enables minimally invasive surface scan accuracy comparable to current clinical methods that require open surgery. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.