An Electromagnetic Tracking Method Using Rotating Orthogonal Coils

In this paper, an electromagnetic tracking method that uses two rotating orthogonal coils is proposed. Two cross-shaped coils can rotate together and be driven in sequence to generate a magnetic field. One of the rotating orthogonal coils is used to track the position of the three-axis sensor and the other is to help solve the orientation of the sensor. As rotation can provide a geometrical relationship between the magnetic source and the sensor, the method does not require the generated magnetic field to imitate the ideal dipole in calculation. A fast noniterative algorithm and simple 1-D mapping along the axis of one coil are used to realize six degree-of-freedom (6DOF) tracking. Thus, the complexity of the magnetic tracking method and the corresponding system can be greatly reduced. Simulation results show that the method has good tracking accuracy and speed, which can be further improved by using an adaptive step-size searching strategy. So, it is concluded that the method can be used as an effective target monitoring method in many application domains such as minimally invasive therapy.