An Approach to Perception Enhancement in Robotized Surgery Using Computer Vision

Abstract

The knowledge of 3D scene information obtained from a video camera allows performing a diversity of action-perception tasks in which 2D data are the only inputs. Exterior orientation techniques are aimed to calculate the position and orientation of the camera with respect to other objects in the scene and perceptually contribute to control action in this kind of applications. In Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), the use of a 2D view on a 3D world is the most common procedure. The surgeon is limited to work without direct physical contact and must rely heavily on indirect perception (Healey, 2008). To effectively link action to perception it is necessary to assure the coherence between the surgeon body movements with the perceived information. Therefore, locating the instruments with respect to the surgeon body movements through computer vision techniques serves to enhance the cognitive mediation between action and perception and can be considered as an important assistance in MIS.