A navigation system for flexible endoscopes using abdominal 3D ultrasound

Phys Med Biol. 2014 Sep 21;59(18):5545-58. doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/59/18/5545. Epub 2014 Aug 29.

Abstract

A navigation system for flexible endoscopes equipped with ultrasound (US) scan heads is presented. In contrast to similar systems, abdominal 3D-US is used for image fusion of the pre-interventional computed tomography (CT) to the endoscopic US. A 3D-US scan, tracked with an optical tracking system (OTS), is taken pre-operatively together with the CT scan. The CT is calibrated using the OTS, providing the transformation from CT to 3D-US. Immediately before intervention a 3D-US tracked with an electromagnetic tracking system (EMTS) is acquired and registered intra-modal to the preoperative 3D-US. The endoscopic US is calibrated using the EMTS and registered to the pre-operative CT by an intra-modal 3D-US/3D-US registration. Phantom studies showed a registration error for the US to CT registration of 5.1 mm±2.8 mm. 3D-US/3D-US registration of patient data gave an error of 4.1 mm compared to 2.8 mm with the phantom. From this we estimate an error on patient experiments of 5.6 mm.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Calibration
  • Endoscopes / standards*
  • Endosonography / instrumentation*
  • Endosonography / methods
  • Humans
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / instrumentation*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / methods