A landmark based registration technique for minimally invasive spinal surgery

This paper proposed a technique for skin curve registration based on landmark detection and calibrated camera-projector system for medical purpose. The technique applies the algorithm which registers a precalculated 3D model for the 2D images of the video frames. The algorithm first calculates the 3D locations of landmarks based upon the calibrated camera projector system and the matching the landmarks in the 3D model using CT-scan. We then generate the image to be projected on the skin curve of a patient from the registered 3D spinal model, and it is created for projecting on the pork or real patient for surgeons to process surgical procedure by utilizing their natural eyes system. The experiments demonstrate the proposed registration method on both animal and real patient and evaluated by several surgeons for spinal surgery.