Robot-Based 3D Ultrasound Scanning and Registration with Infrared Navigation Support

Surgical procedures with navigation or robot system support usually require pre-operative planning data. This data can be acquired with imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT), the current gold standard due to its high precision. With such imaging data, access trajectories, implant positions, individual milling paths, etc. can be computed. We present a novel ultrasound-based method to generate 3D image data which is well-suited for many interventions, but less costly than equivalent CT data. The method's feasibility is demonstrated for robot-based implant bed milling in the lateral skull base, in a process consisting of infrared navigation registration, manual ultrasound scan path delineation, path smoothing and checking, and robot-based ultrasound scan execution.