Evaluation of deformation accuracy of a virtual pneumoperitoneum method based on clinical trials for patient-specific laparoscopic surgery simulator

This paper evaluates deformation accuracy of a virtual pneumoperitoneum method by utilizing measurement data of real deformations of patient bodies. Laparoscopic surgery is an option of surgical operations that is less invasive technique as compared with traditional surgical operations. In laparoscopic surgery, the pneumoperitoneum process is performed to create a viewing and working space. Although a virtual pneumoperitoneum method based on 3D CT image deformation has been proposed for patient-specific laparoscopy simulators, quantitative evaluation based on measurements obtained in real surgery has not been performed. In this paper, we evaluate deformation accuracy of the virtual pneumoperitoneum method based on real deformation data of the abdominal wall measured in operating rooms (ORs.) The evaluation results are used to find optimal deformation parameters of the virtual pneumoperitoneum method. We measure landmark positions on the abdominal wall on a 3D CT image taken before performing a pneumoperitoneum process. The landmark positions are defined based on anatomical structure of a patient body. We also measure the landmark positions on a 3D CT image deformed by the virtual pneumoperitoneum method. To measure real deformations of the abdominal wall, we measure the landmark positions on the abdominal wall of a patient before and after the pneumoperitoneum process in the OR. We transform the landmark positions measured in the OR from the tracker coordinate system to the CT coordinate system. A positional error of the virtual pneumoperitoneum method is calculated based on positional differences between the landmark positions on the 3D CT image and the transformed landmark positions. Experimental results based on eight cases of surgeries showed that the minimal positional error was 13.8 mm. The positional error can be decreased from the previous method by calculating optimal deformation parameters of the virtual pneumoperitoneum method from the experimental results.