Endoscope As A Tracking Tool For Computer Assisted Minimally Invasive Ventral Spine Surgeries

Recovering 3D information from monocular video stream is a difficult but not an impossible task Good quality and magnified images available from the endoscope can be effectively used for this purpose. We are developing a hybrid navigation technique for endoscopic ventral spine surgeries where in we have combined image analysis based 3D recovery with the conventional infrared tracking (Optotrak (c)). For obtaining 3D information from 2D monocular video stream we have modified ARToolKit, an open source library for augmented reality applications, to suit endoscope setup. Initial results are encouraging and are confirmative of the ability of endoscope as a tracking tool in surgical navigation where sub-millimeter accuracy is mandatory.