3D Surgical Overlay with Markerless Image Registration Using a Single Camera

Minimum invasive surgery can benefit from surgical visualization, which is achieved by either virtual reality or augmented reality. We previously proposed an integrated 3D image overlay based surgical visualization solution including 3D image rendering, distortion correction, and spatial projection. For correct spatial projection of the 3D image, image registration is necessary. In this paper we present a 3D image overlay based augmented reality surgical navigation system with markerless image registration using a single camera. The innovation compared with our previous work lies in the single camera based image registration method for 3D image overlay. The 3D mesh model of patient's teeth which is created from the preoperative CT data is matched with the intraoperative image captured by a single optical camera to determine the six-degree-of-freedom pose of the model with respect to the camera. The obtained pose is used to superimpose the 3D image of critical hidden tissues on patient's body directly via a translucent mirror for surgical visualization. The image registration performs automatically within approximate 0.2 s, which enables real-time update to tackle patient's movement. Experimental results show that the registration accuracy is about 1mm and confirm the feasibility of the 3D surgical overlay system.