Specular Reflection Removal for 3D Reconstruction of Tissues using Endoscopy Videos

Endoscopy is widely employed for diagnostic examination of the interior of organs and body cavities and numerous surgical interventions. Still, the inability to correlate individual 2D images with 3D organ morphology limits its applications, especially in intra-operative planning and navigation, disease physiology, cancer surveillance, etc. As a result, most endoscopy videos, which carry enormous data potential, are used only for real-time guidance and are discarded after collection. We present a complete method for the 3D reconstruction of inner organs that suggests image extraction techniques from endoscopic videos and a novel image pre-processing technique to reconstruct and visualize a 3D model of organs from an endoscopic video. We use advanced computer vision methods and do not require any modifications to the clinical-grade endoscopy hardware. We have also formalized an image acquisition protocol through experimentation with a calibrated test bed. We validate the accuracy and robustness of our reconstruction using a test bed with known ground truth. Our method can significantly contribute to endoscopy-based diagnostic and surgical procedures using comprehensive tissue and tumor 3D visualization.