Tissue tracking and registration for image-guided surgery

IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2012

Michael C Yip, David G Lowe, Septimiu E Salcudean, Robert N Rohling, Christopher Y Nguan

Publisher Link: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6264103/

Abstract: Vision-based tracking of tissue is a key component to enable augmented reality during a surgical operation. Conventional tracking techniques in computer vision rely on identifying strong edge features or distinctive textures in a well-lit environment; however endoscopic tissue images do not have strong edge features, are poorly lit and exhibit a high degree of specular reflection. Therefore, prior work in achieving densely populated 3-D features for describing tissue surface profiles require complex image processing techniques and have been limited in providing stable, long-term tracking or real-time processing. In this paper, we present an integrated framework for accurately tracking tissue in surgical stereo-cameras at real-time speeds. We use a combination of the STAR feature detector and binary robust independent elementary features to acquire salient features that can be persistently tracked at high frame rates …

Yip et al. (2012) Tissue tracking and registration for image-guided surgery, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 31, no. 11, pp. 2169-2182.