Method for recovering patient registration

A method for updating a patient registration during a medical procedure is disclosed. The medical procedure uses an optical navigation system for optically tracking a patient reference object in a real-world space. The method includes: acquiring a first set of image data depicting a region of interest on the patient while a first patient registration is intact; detecting that the first patient registration has been lost; obtaining a second set of image data depicting the region of interest; and applying a transform to data points of the first region to obtain data points for an updated patient registration, the transform obtained based on the first and second sets of image data.