Development of a wireless hybrid navigation system for laparoscopic surgery.

: Navigation devices have been essential components for Image-Guided Surgeries (IGS) including laparoscopic surgery. We propose a wireless hybrid navigation device that integrates miniature inertial sensors and electromagnetic sensing units, for tracking instruments both inside and outside the human-body. The proposed system is free of the constraints of line-of-sight or entangling sensor wires. The main functional (sensor) part of the hybrid tracker is only about 15 mm by 15 mm. We identify the sensor models and develop sensor fusion algorithms for the proposed system to get optimal estimation of position and orientation (pose). The proof-of-concept experimental results show that the proposed hardware and software system can meet the defined tracking requirements, in terms of tracking accuracy, latency and robustness to environmental interferences.