DA: Spatial Tracking of a Laparoscope Using an Inside-out Tracker

A laparoscope is a rigid endoscope that is used in minimally invasive surgery. Our current laparoscope augmentation system uses an external optical tracking system to estimate the pose of the laparoscopic camera:

	M. Feuerstein, S.M. Wildhirt, R. Bauernschmitt, N. Navab Automatic Patient Registration for Port Placement in Minimally Invasive Endoscopic Surgery Proceedings of Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2005), Palm Springs, USA, October 2005. The original publication is available online at www.springerlink.com (bib)
	B. Olbrich, J. Traub, S. Wiesner, A. Wiechert, H. Feußner, N. Navab Respiratory Motion Analysis: Towards Gated Augmentation of the Liver Proceedings of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS 2005), pp. 248-253, Berlin, Germany, June 2005 (bib)

For augmented reality applications however it has been proven that inside-out tracking works more accurate in terms of accuracy of the image overlay. The current laparoscope augmentation system has to be extended by an optical camera, which estimates its pose using a visible pattern in the scene (See the sketch below). The major task will be the implementation, testing, and evaluation of existing single camera pose estimation algorithms and integarte them into the current setup. The work requires implementations in C++. Matlab and Computer Vision knowledge will be of great benefit for this thesis.

Mockup for the tracked laparoscope with an inside-out system.

Screenshots of the current laparoscope augmentation using an external optical infrared tracking system (outside-in).