Support and imaging tasks using an ultrasound-based navigation procedure for minimally invasive neck surgery: Experiments and analyses

Minimally invasive neck surgery is a promising technique which is not commonly adopted. Due to the actual intra-operative bedding of the patient which results in a tissue shift compared to the pre-operative imaging, a suitable navigation procedure is required. The detection of the bedding-caused tissue shift is essential for a safe orientation for the surgeons to establish new endoscopic operation procedures. In this work an ultrasound-based navigation procedure for the head-neck-surgery is proposed. A prototype was implemented, which is using the Plus toolkit and integrated into the OP:Sense robotic setup. Experiments on a custom, flexible neck-model were performed. A robotic ultrasound tomography using the navigation system prototype was integrated into OP:Sense. The setup was used to scan bones in water bathes and human arms and create 3D volumes. The overall achieved accuracy was <; 5 mm.