Surgical Tracking System for Laparoscopic Surgery

Collaborators:
ERC-CISST, LCSR Lab of Johns Hopkins University, USA
Fraunhofer Germany (FhG)

Laparoscopic surgery poses a challenging problem for a real-time intra-body navigation system: how to keep tracking the surgical instruments inside the human body intra-operatively. This project aims to develop surgical tracking technology that is accurate, robust against environmental disturbances, and does not require line-of-sight. The current approach is to combine electromagnetic and inertial sensing. Sensor fusion methods are proposed for a hybrid tracking system that incorporates a miniature inertial measurement unit and an electromagnetic navigation system, in order to obtain continuous position and orientation information, even in the presence of metal objects.
Additional information at [SMARTS Lab of Johns Hopkins University]