Visual servoing in medical robotics: a survey. Part I: endoscopic and direct vision imaging - techniques and applications.

BACKGROUND

Intra-operative imaging is widely used to provide visual feedback to a clinician when he/she performs a procedure. In visual servoing, surgical instruments and parts of tissue/body are tracked by processing the acquired images. This information is then used within a control loop to manoeuvre a robotic manipulator during a procedure.

METHODS

A comprehensive search of electronic databases was completed for the period 2000-2013 to provide a survey of the visual servoing applications in medical robotics. The focus is on medical applications where image-based tracking is used for closed-loop control of a robotic system.

RESULTS

Detailed classification and comparative study of various contributions in visual servoing using endoscopic or direct visual images are presented and summarized in tables and diagrams.

CONCLUSION

The main challenges in using visual servoing for medical robotic applications are identified and potential future directions are suggested. 'Supervised automation of medical robotics' is found to be a major trend in this field.