A Symmetry-Based Superposition Method for Planning and Surgical Outcome Assessment

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging and Image Analysis
• Surgical Planning and Navigation
• Computational Geometry

Background:

• Computer-aided surgical planning enhances surgical safety and predictability.
• Validating surgical planning against patient-specific outcomes is crucial.
• Current methods for comparing planned and actual surgical results have limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust superposition method for assessing deviations between surgical planning and outcomes.
• To utilize the symmetrical characteristics of a target for accurate assessment.
• To compare a novel OSP-based contouring method with the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm.

Main Methods:

• Proposed a refined optimal symmetry plane (OSP)-based contouring method to simplify 3D superposition into 2D.
• Transferred complex 3D superposition operations into a 2D contouring approach.
• Compared the OSP-based method against the traditional iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm.

Main Results:

• The OSP-based method demonstrated significantly better results compared to the traditional ICP method.
• The OSP-based contouring method was 11 times faster than the ICP method.
• The proposed method is resilient to metallic artifacts and surgical geometric changes.

Conclusions:

• The refined OSP-based contouring method provides a robust and efficient approach for surgical outcome assessment.
• This technique offers improved accuracy and speed over conventional methods.
• Applicable for post-operative assessment and long-term patient follow-up.