Laparoscopic Quantitative 3D Endoscopy for Image Guided Surgery

Image-guided surgery aims at relating data of an on-going intervention to preoperative information about important anatomical structures or tumor localizations. Using intra-operatively acquired 3D information of the operation area has been proven to be the right starting point for accomplishing this task, but is leading to technical challenges especially in the field of minimally invasive surgery. A novel laparoscopic 3D surface scan device providing >3000 3D surface points at 20 fps was utilized to exemplarily accomplish a) the fusion of 3D surface scans and color information at 20 fps and b) the fusion of 3D surface scans and CT data with a mean error of 1.68mm. Experiments were on one hand accomplished in-vitro using a porcine stomach and on the other hand using a liver phantom. The results verify the proof of concept of the utilized system and lead to clear directions for future research.