Space calibration of the cranial and maxillofacial robotic system in surgery

Abstract

Space registration in cranial and maxillofacial surgery is intended to map the image space to the robot space. This requires calibration of multiple coordinate systems. In this process, the calibration accuracy between the robot coordinate system and the NDI vision coordinate system directly determines the precision of the surgical navigation system, which is the key to success. In this paper, the relationship between robot space and visual space is studied according to the requirements of surgery, and with reference to the characteristics of the vision system itself. Based on this analysis and traditional methods, a new linear rotation calibration method is presented. Calibration can be automated to decrease human error and increase the reliability and stability. Finally, an experiment is conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the calibration algorithm. The results show that the minimum position error was less than 0.87 mm and the minimum posture deviation was about 0.83 degrees, indicating that the calibration precision can meet the operation requirements. There are good prospects for this method using in surgical calibration application.

Keywords:

• Space calibration
• accuracy
• automatic calibration
• path planning
• error analysis

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest in this study.

Funding

This research was funded by National High-tech R&D Program of China (No. 2014AA041601, No. 2015BAF09B02) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2014M561338).