Geometric calibration of markerless optical surgical navigation system

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Surgical Navigation Systems
• Optical Tracking Technologies

Background:

• Patient-to-image registration is crucial for image-guided surgical navigation.
• Marker-based registration methods are time-consuming and prone to manual errors.
• Markerless registration presents a viable alternative to overcome these limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel optical surgical navigation system.
• To introduce a geometric calibration method for simultaneous calibration of near-infrared tracking and structured light components.
• To enhance the accuracy and efficiency of image-guided surgery through markerless registration.

Main Methods:

• Design of a specialized calibration board.
• Proposal of a geometric calibration method for optical components.
• Simultaneous calibration of near-infrared tracking and structured light systems.

Main Results:

• Calibration accuracy demonstrated with mean errors of 0.035 mm (planar board) and 0.119 mm (cylinder).
• Reconstruction of a calibration board yielded a mean error of 0.012 mm.
• The optical surgical navigation system achieved a tracking error of less than 0.3 mm in head phantom experiments.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method offers high accessibility and accuracy for surgical navigation.
• The system meets the demanding application requirements of image-guided surgery.
• Markerless registration via the developed optical system enhances surgical precision.