With the project “MISS“ (“Minimal Invasive Smart Suture“), the Fraunhofer IIS has developed an approach, where preoperative images and planning data can be provided during the intervention.
A video view of the organ of interest, in this case the heart, is recorded during the intervention and is displayed together with the preoperative acquired angiography images at the point of care.
The surgeon can interactively set distinct point-correspondences between both modalities (cf. Fig. 1). These landmarks are used to perform image registration to map the preoperative images (angiography) onto the cardiac video (cf. Fig. 2).
Due to the movements of the heart beating, breathing and the intervention itself, the landmark points in the live view might become invalid after some time.
To meet this challenge and to release the task of continuous interaction, those landmark points in the video are tracked automatically, hence yielding a continuous basis for the registration and augmentation of angiography onto cardiac video.
As a result of this research project, an interactive tool has been developed, which supports an advanced and augmented visualization for cardiac surgery and supports the orientation of the surgeon. The tool is also applicable to alternative scenarios with similar problems.