Influence of the quality of intraoperative fluoroscopic images on the spatial positioning accuracy of a CAOS system.

BACKGROUND: Spatial positioning accuracy is a key issue in a computer-assisted orthopaedic surgery (CAOS) system. Since intraoperative fluoroscopic images are one of the most important input data to the CAOS system, the quality of these images should have a significant influence on the accuracy of the CAOS system. But the regularities and mechanism of the influence of the quality of intraoperative images on the accuracy of a CAOS system have yet to be studied. METHODS: Two typical spatial positioning methods - a C-arm calibration-based method and a bi-planar positioning method - are used to study the influence of different image quality parameters, such as resolution, distortion, contrast and signal-to-noise ratio, on positioning accuracy. The error propagation rules of image error in different spatial positioning methods are analyzed by the Monte Carlo method. RESULTS: Correlation analysis showed that resolution and distortion had a significant influence on spatial positioning accuracy. In addition the C-arm calibration-based method was more sensitive to image distortion, while the bi-planar positioning method was more susceptible to image resolution. The image contrast and signal-to-noise ratio have no significant influence on the spatial positioning accuracy. The result of Monte Carlo analysis proved that generally the bi-planar positioning method was more sensitive to image quality than the C-arm calibration-based method. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of intraoperative fluoroscopic images is a key issue in the spatial positioning accuracy of a CAOS system. Although the 2 typical positioning methods have very similar mathematical principles, they showed different sensitivities to different image quality parameters. The result of this research may help to create a realistic standard for intraoperative fluoroscopic images for CAOS systems.

The development and error analysis of a kinematic parameters based spatial positioning method for an orthopedic navigation robot system.

BACKGROUND: Spatial positioning is the key function of a surgical navigation robot system, and accuracy is the most important performance index of such a system. METHODS: The kinematic parameters of a six degrees of freedom (DOF) robot arm were used to form the transformation from intraoperative fluoroscopy images to a robot's coordinate system without C-arm calibration and to solve the redundant DOF problem. The influences of three typical error sources and their combination on the final navigation error were investigated through Monte Carlo simulation. RESULTS: The navigation error of the proposed method is less than 0.6 mm, and the feasibility was verified through cadaver experiments. Error analysis suggests that the robot kinematic error has a linear relationship with final navigation error, while the image error and gauge error have nonlinear influences. CONCLUSIONS: This kinematic parameters based method can provide accurate and convenient navigation for orthopedic surgeries. The result of error analysis will help error design and assignment for surgical robots.