Video Object Tracking and Analysis for Computer Assisted Surgery
This addresses the need for safer and potentially more affordable surgical navigation tools for spinal surgery, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing pattern recognition methods.
The paper tackles the problem of reducing radiation exposure in pedicle screw insertion surgery by developing a video-based system to track the drill's position and orientation using pattern recognition and geometric features from a CCD camera, enabling real-time navigation with animated graphics overlay.
Pedicle screw insertion technique has made revolution in the surgical treatment of spinal fractures and spinal disorders. Although X- ray fluoroscopy based navigation is popular, there is risk of prolonged exposure to X- ray radiation. Systems that have lower radiation risk are generally quite expensive. The position and orientation of the drill is clinically very important in pedicle screw fixation. In this paper, the position and orientation of the marker on the drill is determined using pattern recognition based methods, using geometric features, obtained from the input video sequence taken from CCD camera. A search is then performed on the video frames after preprocessing, to obtain the exact position and orientation of the drill. Animated graphics, showing the instantaneous position and orientation of the drill is then overlaid on the processed video for real time drill control and navigation.