Generation of Synthetic Data for the Comparison of Different 3D-3D Registration Approaches in Laparoscopic Surgery

In laparoscopic surgery image-guided navigation systems could support the surgeon by providing subsurface information such as the positions of tumors and vessels. For this purpose, one option is to perform a reliable registration of preoperative 3D data and a surface patch from laparo-scopic video data. A robust and automatic 3D-3D registration pipeline for the application during laparoscopic surgery has not yet been found due to application-specific challenges. To gain a better insight, we propose a framework enabling a qualitative and quantitative comparison of different registration approaches. The introduced framework is able to evaluate 3D feature descriptors and registration algorithms by generating and modifying synthetic data from clinical examples. Different confounding factors are considered and thus the reality can be reflected in any simplified or more complex way. Two exemplary experiments with a liver model, using the RANSAC algorithm, showed an increasing registration error for a decreasing size of the surface patch size and after introducing modifications. Moreover, the registration accuracy was dependent on the position and structure of the surface patch. The framework helps to quantitatively assess and optimize the registration pipeline, and hereby suggests future software improvements even with only few clinical examples. Clinical relevance- The introduced framework permits a quantitative and comprehensive comparison of different registration approaches which forms the basis for a supportive navigation tool in laparoscopic surgery.