There is a strong trend within the medical community towards minimally
invasive surgical procedures, with the expected benefits of reduced
complications, reduced trauma for the patient, and reduced length of
hospital stays, all with the expected benefit of reduced costs and
increased quality of life for the patient. To effectively utilize
minimally invasive procedures, one needs automatic or semi-automatic
methods for localizing anatomical structures for the surgeon, where
such localization is coupled with pre-surgical planning, and one needs
automatic or semi-automatic methods to support navigation within the
body and delivery of treatment and procedures in minimally invasive
ways. Several examples serve to motivate the idea of tools for
minimal invasion. One such example is enhanced reality
visualizations, in which segmented and labelled anatomical models,
acquired through three dimensional medical sensors (MRI, CT) are
automatically registered with the actual patient, and displayed in a
superimposed visualization so that the surgeon can see internal
structures directly overlaid on top of the patient, from the correct
viewpoint. Ideally, such structures would be tracked and their
registration refined over time, to maintain a consistent visualization
as the surgeon changes view, as the patient moves, or as the tissue
deforms. This problem is particular relevant in endoscopic
applications, since here the surgeon, by definition, has a limited
field of view, and navigation and localization become critically
important.
A second example is the use of robotic devices to assist a
surgeon. Such devices include remote manipulation and tactile
feedback devices for palpation of internal tissue, systems to deliver
surgical tools and procedures to inaccesible locations, such as in
sinus surgery, and tools to improve the accuracy and reliability of
surgical procedures, such as the RoboDoc system used in hip
replacement surgery. Key issues in this scenario are real-time
processing needs, band-width needs, and computational and data
reliability.