Using a passive coordinate measurement arm for motion tracking of a rigid endoscope for augmented-reality image-guided surgery.

BACKGROUND

One of the main sources of error in commercial surgical navigation systems is the tracking of surgical tools. Mainstream systems typically use optical or electromagnetic tracking technologies, which exhibit accuracies of the order of 1 mm. The objective of this study was to introduce a lightweight high-precision passive coordinate measurement arm into an augmented reality-based surgical navigation system to track a rigid endoscope.

METHODS

A series of dry laboratory experiments were run to compare the tracking performance of an optical tracking device, a passive coordinate measurement arm and a hybrid set-up.

RESULTS

The optical device displayed overlay errors in the range 1.5-3 mm. For the precision measurement arm, 96% of overlay errors were < 1 mm. The hybrid set-up exhibited overlay errors in the range 0.8-1.5 mm.

CONCLUSIONS

The reported experiments showed that a high-precision articulated measurement arm could be used as a motion-tracking device for surgical instruments in augmented-reality surgical navigation.