Direct 3D ultrasound to video registration using photoacoustic effect

Interventional guidance systems require surgical navigation systems to register different tools and devices together. Standard navigation systems have various drawbacks leading to target registration errors (TRE) of around 3mm. The aim of this work is to introduce the photoacoustic (PA) effect as a direct 3D ultrasound (US) to video registration method. We present our experimental setup and demonstrate its feasibility on both a synthetic phantom and an ex vivo tissue phantom. We achieve an average TRE of 560 microns and standard deviation of 280 microns on a synthetic phantom. Also, an average TRE of 420 microns and standard deviation of 150 microns on the ex vivo tissue phantom are obtained. We describe a roadmap to bring this system into the surgical setting and highlight possible challenges along the way.