A method improving the workflow and the registration robustness of ultrasound-guided spine surgery

A method is presented for achieving robust joint calibration and registration in minimally invasive Computer-Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery. Joint calibration and registration removes the need for phantombased ultrasound (US) calibration in the operating room and the robust optimization framework allows for starting registration from rough initial parameter estimates which can be obtained from apriori knowledge about the surgical scenario. Furthermore US data processing is performed on a frame-byframe basis which enables real-time updates of the registration estimate and provides feedback on the quality of the acquired data to the surgeon. Methods