Improving target registration accuracy in image-guided neurosurgery by optimizing the distribution of fiducial points

The point-pair method is widely used to register the patient space and the image space in image-guided neuro surgery. In this kind of registration, the distribution of fiducial points has a great influence on the registration accuracy at the target point.

In this paper we propose the idea of target registration accuracy contribution (TRAC) of current fiducial points and of candidate fiducial points. Based on these two values, we give an interactive method to help the surgeon optimize the distribution of fiducial points so as to improve the registration accuracy at the target point.

The experiments on real patients' data showed that this approach reduced approximately half of the registration error at the target point introduced by unsuitable distribution of fiducial points. When transferring the optimized distribution to real patients, the target registration accuracy obtained from optimization had no serious deterioration.

This study provides a practical approach for neurosurgeons to arrange the fiducial points properly on a patient's head.