Direct ultrasound to video registration using photoacoustic markers from a single image pose

Fusion of video and other imaging modalities is common in modern surgical scenarios to provide surgeons with additional information. Doing so requires the use of interventional guidance equipment and surgical navigation systems to register the tools and devices used in surgery with each other. In this work, we focus explicitly on registering ultrasound with a stereocamera system using photoacoustic markers. Previous work has shown that photoacoustic markers can be used to register three-dimensional ultrasound with video resulting in target registration errors lower than the current available systems. Photoacoustic markers are non-collinear laser spots projected onto some surface. They can be simultaneously visualized by a stereocamera system and in an ultrasound volume because of the photoacoustic effect. This work replaces the three-dimensional ultrasound volume with images from a single ultrasound image pose. While an ultrasound volume provides more information than an ultrasound image, it has its disadvantages such as higher cost and slower acquisition rate. However, in general, it is difficult to register two-dimensional with three-dimensional spatial data. We propose the use of photoacoustic markers viewed by a convex array ultrasound transducer. Each photoacoustic markers wavefront provides information on its elevational position, resulting in three-dimensional spatial data. This development enhances this methods practicality as convex array transducers are more common in surgical practice than three-dimensional transducers. This work is demonstrated on a synthetic phantom. The resulting target registration error for this experiment was 2.47mm and the standard deviations was 1.29mm, which is comparable to current available systems.