Interactive registration and visualization of cardiac video and angiography

Abstract

Preoperative planning of surgical interventions is common in clinical practice. Multiple imaging modalities are used to prepare the intervention and to support the surgeon in localizing the interesting area. In case of coronary artery bypass grafting, invasive cardiac catheterization is state of the art. A missing link exists most often in the availability of the planning data at the point of care (PoC) where the transfer of the information is done notional by the surgeon. Whereas there are many cases for which this procedure is sufficient, an advanced support for navigation would be helpful in complex scenarios. With the work presented here, a fundament is built, where preoperative images and planning data can be provided during the intervention. A video view of the organ, in this case the heart, is recorded and displayed together with the preoperative angiography images at the point of care. The surgeon can set distinct point-correspondences between both modalities. These landmarks are used to perform image registration to map the preoperative image onto the live view, but due to the movements of the heart beating and the intervention itself, the landmark points in the live view are invalid after short durations - seconds in worst cases. To meet this challenge and to release the task of continuous interaction, those landmark points are tracked automatically until the scenario has changed too much. The result is an interactive tool, which leads to an advanced visualization and supports the orientation of the surgeon.