Evaluating two Methods for Geometry Reconstruction from Sparse Surgical Navigation Data

Abstract

In this study we investigate methods for fitting a Statistical Shape Model (SSM) to intra-operatively acquired point cloud data from a surgical navigation system. We validate the fitted models against the pre-operatively acquired Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data from the same patients.

We consider a cohort of 10 patients who underwent navigated total knee arthroplasty. As part of the surgical protocol the patients’ distal femurs were partially digitized. All patients had an MRI scan two months pre-operatively. The MRI data were manually segmented and the reconstructed bone surfaces used as ground truth against which the fit was compared. Two methods were used to fit the SSM to the data, based on (1) Iterative Closest Points (ICP) and (2) Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM).

For both approaches, the difference between model fit and ground truth surface averaged less than 1.7 mm and excellent correspondence with the distal femoral morphology can be demonstrated.

Hans Lamecker

Director, Software Development

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