Biocompatible Near-Infrared Three-Dimensional Tracking System

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2017 Mar;64(3):549-556. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2017.2656803. Epub 2017 Jan 23.

Abstract

A fundamental challenge in soft-tissue surgery is that target tissue moves and deforms, becomes occluded by blood or other tissue, and is difficult to differentiate from surrounding tissue. We developed small biocompatible near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) markers with a novel fused plenoptic and NIR camera tracking system, enabling three-dimensional tracking of tools and target tissue while overcoming blood and tissue occlusion in the uncontrolled, rapidly changing surgical environment. In this work, we present the tracking system and marker design and compare tracking accuracies to standard optical tracking methods using robotic experiments. At speeds of 1 mm/s, we observe tracking accuracies of 1.61 mm, degrading only to 1.71 mm when the markers are covered in blood and tissue.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • Biocompatible Materials / chemical synthesis*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Fiducial Markers*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / instrumentation*
  • Indocyanine Green*
  • Infrared Rays*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Surgery, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation*

Substances

  • Biocompatible Materials
  • Indocyanine Green