Robust multi-modal surface matching for intra-operative registration

Range imaging modalities, such as time-of-flight cameras (ToF), are becoming popular for the acquisition of intra-operative data, which can be used for registering the patient´s anatomy with pre-operative data (e.g. Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging). As pre- and intra-operative data are acquired with different modalities, and are subject to different sources of error (systematic errors and noise), matching them is a challenging problem. We present a method for the registration of multi-modal surfaces, which is robust to high noise levels and is applicable to incomplete surfaces. An evaluation with simulated and real data demonstrates that the presented method is very accurate and is fast enough for intra-operative purposes.