A novel non-model-based 6-DOF electromagnetic tracking method using non-iterative algorithm

Electromagnetic tracking, a non-fluoroscopic image navigation method most often used in minimally invasive therapy, has prominent advantages and features over the traditional X-ray radioscopy. Using two rotating coils and one 3-axis magnetic sensor, a novel 6 degree of freedom (DOF) electromagnetic tracking method is proposed in this paper. Two alternate rotating magnetic fields are generated in turns by these coils and the moving-around sensor simultaneously detects the magnetic filed flux density in 3 orthogonal directions. As the magnitude of a magnetic field comes to the maximum only when the rotating coil directly points toward the sensor, the spatial position and orientation of the sensor can be determined using triangulation measurement. An embodiment and the corresponding system framework of this method are developed and a non-model-based non-iterative algorithm is presented to calculate the 6-DOF of position and orientation. Moreover, simulation experiments are performed to validate the proposed method. The obtained results show that the averaged position error is 0.2365 cm and the averaged orientation error is below 1 degree away from low resolution area.