Robust model-based 3D/3D fusion using sparse matching for minimally invasive surgery

Abstract

Classical surgery is being disrupted by minimally invasive and transcatheter procedures. As there is no direct view or access to the affected anatomy, advanced imaging techniques such as 3D C-arm CT and C-arm fluoroscopy are routinely used for intra-operative guidance. However, intra-operative modalities have limited image quality of the soft tissue and a reliable assessment of the cardiac anatomy can only be made by injecting contrast agent, which is harmful to the patient and requires complex acquisition protocols. We propose a novel sparse matching approach for fusing high quality pre-operative CT and non-contrasted, non-gated intra-operative C-arm CT by utilizing robust machine learning and numerical optimization techniques. Thus, high-quality patient-specific models can be extracted from the pre-operative CT and mapped to the intra-operative imaging environment to guide minimally invasive procedures. Extensive quantitative experiments demonstrate that our model-based fusion approach has an average execution time of 2.9 s, while the accuracy lies within expert user confidence intervals. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.