Robust Visual Tracking Method Based on the Optical Property of an Endoscopic Camera

∼Performance evaluation and application to direct calibration of endoscopic cameras∼

Abstract

Endoscopic surgery is minimally invasive and presents many advantages for the patient such as reduced pain, less scarring, and quicker recovery. However, endoscopic cameras offer a narrow field of view and display only the visible surface, which limits the application range for surgery. Thus, the visual tracking of surgical instruments for surgical assistant robots and surgical navigation systems has become an important technique. In this paper, we propose a robust visual tracking method that usesan infrared reflectance marker focused on the optical properties of the endoscopic camera. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we performed two experiments to evaluate robustness and application to direct calibration of the endoscopic camera.