Development of a novel laser range scanner

Laser range scanning an organ surface intraoperatively provides a cost effective and accurate means of measuring geometric changes in tissue. A novel laser range scanner with integrated tracking was designed, developed, and analyzed with the goal of providing intraoperative surface data during neurosurgery. The scanner is fitted with passive spheres to be optically tracked in the operating room. The design notably includes a single-lens system capable of acquiring the geometric information (as a Cartesian point cloud) via laser illumination and charge-coupled device (CCD) collection, as well as the color information via visible light collection on the same CCD. The geometric accuracy was assessed by scanning a machined phantom of known dimensions and comparing relative distances of landmarks from the point cloud to the known distances. The ability of the scanner to be tracked was first evaluated by perturbing its orientation in front of the optical tracking camera and recording the number of spheres visible to the camera at each orientation, and then by observing the variance in point cloud locations of a fixed object when the tracking camera is moved around the scanner. The scanning accuracy test resulted in an RMS error of 0.47 mm with standard deviation of 0.40 mm. The sphere visibility test showed that four diodes were visible in most of the probable operating orientations, and the overall tracking standard deviation was observed to be 1.49 mm. Intraoperative collection of cortical surface scans using the new scanner is currently underway.