Using registration uncertainty visualization in a user study of a simple surgical task.

We present a novel method to visualize registration uncertainty and a simple study to motivate the use of uncertainty visualization in computer-assisted surgery. Our visualization method resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the number of attempts required to localize a target, and a statistically significant reduction in the number of targets that our subjects failed to localize. Most notably, our work addresses the existence of uncertainty in guidance and offers a first step towards helping surgeons make informed decisions in the presence of imperfect data.