Abstract

In minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery only small incisions are used to perform an operation. A split of the breastbone or the use of the straining heart-lung machine can be avoided, resulting in less surgical complications than traditional invasive surgery. A reasonable realization of these operations was facilitated by master-slave systems for teleoperations. Whereas the surgeon is controlling the teleoperator sitting at a master console, the arms of the slave robot are able to imitate the surgeon's actions on the patient. For a successful teleoperator based intervention it is crucial to find the optimal locations, also referred to as ports, for the incision sites of the teleoperator arms. Traditionally, planning the port placement was dependant on the surgeon's experience in interpreting previously acquired two-dimensional image stacks such as computed tomography slices. This work introduces a planning tool for port placement that is supporting the surgeon to segment cross-sectional axial slices acquired by imaging modalities, reconstruct a three-dimensional model of the patient from these slices, and simulating the cardiovascular intervention in a virtual environment. For the virtual simulation of an intervention, the teleoperator arms can be interactively placed and moved within the patient's model in such a way that they neither intersect each other nor vitals and bones. Therefore, the planning tool's graphical user interface provides various visualization, planning, and validation options. Collision detection techniques and a virtual endoscope view support the verification of the port placement process. All planned data can be exported to an intra-operative navigation tool.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

Conclusion

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