A Laparoscopic Liver Navigation Pipeline with Minimal Setup Requirements

Reuben Docea, Micha Pfeiffer, Jan Müller, Katja Krug, Matthias Hardner, Paul Riedel, Martin Menzel, Fiona R. Kolbinger, Laura Frohneberg, Jürgen Weitz, Stefanie Speidel

Abstract:

In the case of liver tumor resections, Minimally
Invasive Surgery (MIS) poses several benefits over open surgery.
However, MIS makes navigating the surgical scene considerably
more challenging, which hampers the realization of its full
potential. Many Image Guidance Navigation Systems (IGS) have
been proposed to overcome these challenges. The majority of
these depend on optical tracking systems, whose additional setup
overhead is a barrier to clinical translation. In this paper we put
forward an IGS prototype which eliminates the need for optical
tracking, and additionally incorporates a user-oriented camera
calibration method which is more reliable and faster than typical
checkerboard methods. We lastly make publicly available the core
system modules for 3D reconstruction and rigid registration.