Tracking of camera motion of real endoscope by using the Virtual Endoscope System

This paper proposes a method for tracking the camera motion of a real endoscope by using a virtual endoscopy system. When a sequence of real endoscopic images is inputted, tracking is performed by searching a sequence of viewpoints and view directions of the virtual endoscope that correspond to the camera motions of the real endoscope. The method searches for the best viewpoint and view direction by calculating similarity between generated virtual endoscopic images and real endoscopic images. Camera motion is also estimated by directly analyzing video images. We have applied the proposed method to video images of actual bronchoscopy and X-ray CT images. The results showed that the method could track the camera motion of a real endoscope.