Method of Image Processing to Recognize Tip of Trocar into Abdomen for Endoscopic Surgery

Abstract

An image processing method using inter frame differences of the moving object and averaged center points of the detected lines to recognize a tip of trocar through forceps in a laparoscopic view has been developed. The proposed method could be used for semi-automatic control of a laparoscope robot. It makes use of an extracting information for Blue from the original RGB image, detection of edges and lines from the inter frame differences, a masking process based on the direction of the trocar into the abdomen, averaged center points of the detected lines, and recognition of the point in the triangular area at the tip of the trocar. The point recognized in laparoscopic surgical videos using this method were performed, and the recognition rate was 70 %. Furthermore, the control of the manipulator with a laparoscope using the template matching based on this method was performed.