Intraoperative presentation of surgical planning and simulation results using a stereoscopic see-through head-mounted display

Abstract

While many tools for preoperative planning and simulation of surgical interventions are available, the surgical procedure itself still lacks the computer based assistance. In this paper we present an approach for closing this gap using Augmented Reality techniques. The idea is to use a see- through head-mounted display for the superimposition of a patient with virtual dat. This technique enables surgeons to visualize and to re-use preoperatively calculated data directly in the operation field. At the Institute for Process Control and Robotics (IPR) at Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH) an experimental hardware setup for the Intraoperative Presentation of image data causes hard accuracy challenges. Main steps in the technical area are calibration, tracking and registration. We present our solutions for these machine vision related tasks. Afterwards we describe the way data is supplied and prepared for superimposition, and we also describe the presentation process. At the end of the paper clinical evaluation and future work will be discussed.