An Idea for Improvement of Target Registration Accuracy in Surgical Navigation

Accuracy of surgical navigation depends on the registration process. The most common registration method has been the point based registration. In point-based registration between the patient and the image, skin markers are often used. Although registration accuracy appears relatively high in the region around the markers, the accuracy is not sustained at a deeply seated target in the body. To improve target registration accuracy around the target, we incorporated anatomical landmarks near the target organ. Ultrasound was employed to obtain the coordinate of the anatomical landmarks after the calibration with the external position tracker. We performed the experiments with a phantom which simulates the spine, and the results showed the feasibility of the proposed method.