Abstract
Laparoscopic surgery is one of the most challenging surgical operations, because inside information about the target organ cannot be fully understood from the laparoscopic image. Therefore, a fusion technique of laparoscopic and ultrasonic images is proposed for guidance during laparoscopic surgery. The proposed technique can display the internal organ structure by overlaying a three-dimensional (3D) ultrasonic image over a 3D laparoscopic image, which is acquired using a stereo laparoscope. The registration of the 3D images is performed by registering the surface of the target organ, which is found in the two 3D images without requiring the use of an external position detecting device. The proposed technique was evaluated experimentally using a tissue-mimicking phantom. Results obtained led to registration accuracy better than 2 cm. The total computation time was 3.1 min on a personal computer (Xeon processor, 3 GHz CPU). The structural information permits the visualization of target organs during laparoscopic surgery.