Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 20, 2026
Technical Approach for Infrared Tracking for Soft Tissue Navigation with a Holographic Head-Mounted Display and Preclinical Validation
Published on: September 2, 2025
A study on the theoretical and practical accuracy of conoscopic holography-based surface measurements: toward image
J Burgner1, A L Simpson, J M Fitzpatrick
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. jessica.burgner@vanderbilt.edu
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.
