Fluoroscopic image processing for computer-aided orthopaedic surgery

Abstract

This paper describes the fluoroscopic X-ray image processing techniques of FRACAS, a computer-integrated orthopaedic system for bone fracture reduction. Fluoroscopic image processing consists of image dewarping, camera calibration, and bone contour extraction. Our approach focuses on bone imaging and emphasizes integration, full automation, simplicity, robustness, and practicality. We describe the experimental setup and report results quantifying the accuracy of our methods. We show that after dewarping and calibration, submillimetric spatial positioning accuracy is achievable with standard equipment. We present a new bone contour segmentation algorithm based on robust image region statistics computation which yields good results on clinical images.