Image Guided Positioning for an Interactive C-arm ... - CiteSeerX

Image Guided Positioning for an Interactive C-arm Fluoroscope N. Bindera, C. Bodensteinera, L. Matthäusa, R. Burgkartb, A Schweikarda a

Institut für Robotik und Kognitive Systeme, Universität zu Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany b Klinik für Orthopädie, Klinikum Rechts der Isar der TU-München …

Abstract. Image acquisition with a manual C-arm fluoroscope during surgery is complicated and time consuming. Due to the serial kinematics, movements in Cartesian coordinates i.e. in respect to the patient or to a previous radiograph are difficult to accomplish without changes in viewing angle and/or distance to the region of interest (ROI). By transferring the positioning task on a fully motorized computercontrolled C-arm, a great number of applications can be simplified and a wide range of new applications become possible. Target of this research is a much more intuitive handling of the fluoroscope. This will minimize stress, positioning time and radiation exposure of the OR staff and patients. The computer assistance is an addon which should help the user, but the common ways of handling are still given and can be used e.g. in critical situations. The surgeon is thus in constant control of the new system. Keywords: Robot-assisted surgery, medical robotics, intra-surgical imaging, robotised C-arm, 3D fluoroscope, C-arm kinematics

1. Purpose Fluoroscopic C-arms are common devices for acquiring images during surgery. Manual positioning is time-consuming and requires considerable experience. Trained users must often take several images to find the best viewing direction. On our fully motorized C-arm a number of clinical applications have been developed: simplified positioning via Cartesian control; automatic acquisition of panoramic images; 3D CT with arbitrary viewing angles; and automated anatomy-oriented positioning. Further applications like 4D intraoperative CT with or without respiration triggering will follow. This research has three main goals: Minimizing radiation exposure of the OR staff and patients, reducing positioning time, and enhancing imaging capability. But all these applications have to be seen as add-ons to the standard means of handling which Fig. 1: The robotised C-arm. are still kept. The underlying idea for all applications is to express the desired movement or desired position of the C-arm not in terms of joint parameters, but in terms of left/right, front/back and up/down in relation to C-arm-, patient-, or radiograph-coordinates. With the help of inverse kinematics the joint parameters (d1, Θ2, d3, Θ 4, Θ 5) are calculated. Now the robot can be moved easily to the new position for the final image acquisition. 2. Methods A robotised C-arm offers numerous applications. We completely motorized a standard C-arm and equipped it with position-encoders and motor controllers. The mechanical system was analysed and the inverse kinematic problem was solved to allow for jointparameter calculation from a given position and orientation [1][2]. Parallel, as a tool to develop and test new ideas we implemented a computer simulation [3] of the device including a patient model and the ability to take radiographs.

Unlike other systems [4][5], we are not limited to one fixed plane or a fixed distance to the center of rotation but can reach all possible positions in between the mechanical limitations. 2.1 User Controlled Movements 2.1.1. Cartesian Movements When operating the standard mechanical C-arm by hand, joint parameters were changed one after the other. The non-trivial architecture of the fluoroscope leads to complex changes of the region of interest and the viewing direction when moving a joint. Thus it is difficult to set the parameters of the Carm for a certain region of interest. Using the inverse kinematics, movements along Cartesian axes can be performed easily. Those motions are much easier to visualize by humans and allow for faster positioning. Here it makes no difference which coordinate system is used. The translations and rotations can be specified in relation to the C-arm, to the patient, or to the radiograph. The latter allows for shifts in the image plane, in order to recenter (coordinates x and y) or to obtain a closer view (coordinate z ). The new target position can be marked directly on the radiograph e.g. on a touch-screen. To make positioning even easier, a simulation of the new image - based on previous pictures - can be presented to the OR staff on the computer screen. 2.1.2. Isocentric Rotation As already noted, common C-arm designs were not optimized for robotic movements. Due to manufacturing reasons most fluoroscopes are non-isocentric, i.e. when moving joints four and/or five, the image center will change. This complicates image acquisition of a ROI from different viewing angles. Using the inverse kinematics we can easily rotate the C-arm with a user specified distance around an arbitrary point and in an arbitrary plane. All the surgeon has to do is to define the center of the rotation, either by marking a point in an image - an fast, but somewhat inaccurate way - or by marking the same landmark in two different images to allow for the extraction of 3D-coordinates of the desired fixed point - the exact way. The plane of the rotation can be defined by the plane of the C of the fluoroscope or by defining any two linearly independent vectors centered on a fixed point. Another application based on this isocentric rotation is described in section C.2. 2.2 Automatic Positioning 2.2.1. Re-centering Placing the C-arm in such a way that a given ROI will be imaged is often difficult and requires experience, especially when the patient is corpulent. Thus it might be desirable to obtain an image with the femur head center in the image center. If an image is not centered properly and the ROI is on the edge of the radiograph, important Fig. 2: Selecting the new center. information might be cut off. But the picture can still be used to obtain a corrected image. After marking the desired center in the old image, the robotic C-arm can automatically reposition itself such

that the desired region is mapped to the center. The viewing angle can either be corrected before taking the new image or be kept from the old image (compare section A.1). 2.2.2. Standard Images Many radiographs are views of standard planes e. g. anteriorposterior, lateral, medial etc. A motorized C-arm can be moved easily to these positions. In order to enable the robotic C-arm to move to the desired position, the surgeon identifies several landmarks on two pictures of the ROI taken from different angles. The 3D-coordinates of the landmarks are calculated internally and the correct image center and image direction are calculated based on the inverse kinematics. The latter one relies on marking special landmarks from which to get

Fig. 3: Landmark-based a.-p. positioning

the right anatomical position for the image. E. g. for a-p-images of the spine the surgeon would mark the left and right transverse process and the spine of the vertebra to define the region of interest as well as the a-p-direction. It should be mentioned that other image modalities can be easily included into the set of standard images by defining the number of points to be marked and the algorithm describing the ROI and beam direction in terms of the marked points. 2.3 Image Sequences Some of the most interesting perspectives for a motorized C-arm are applications which need the input of more than one image. These applications require an exact calibration of the generated image [6][7] and compensation of the mechanical deformations caused by the masses of the source and the detector. 2.3.1. Longbone and Poster Images Some structures in the human body are bigger than the field of view of the fluoroscope. In orthopaedics, sometimes images of the whole femur are useful. Neurosurgeons may have to scan the whole spine to find

Fig. 4: Radiographs and combined longbone-panorama.

the vertebra of interest. Images of the entire thorax or pelvis are important in emergency rooms or surgery. Currently the field of view of the standard C-arm is very limited (typical is a 17 cm diameter circular image). Our idea is to acquire several images and compose a single image by (semi-)automatic positioning of the

C-am during image collection. By marking the starting point on two images from different angles its position in space can be calculated. After defining a target point in the same way, the angle of view (a-p, lateral or user-defined) is set. Depending on the length of the distance between start- and end-point, the C-arm will take a series of radiographs and will align them to one single longbone-image. Our longbone-application offers user-interactive image acquisition. The radiographs are combined according to their position and orientation which are given by the joint parameters. For emergency radiographs marking start- and endpoint in two images each will take too long. Thus, only the start point and a direction-vector are marked in the first image and the fluoroscope moves in the indicated direction parallel to the image plane taking a specified number of radiographs. Additionally, the direction of movement might be corrected during processing. It is a non-trivial task to align single images for manual long-bone-image construction. Different methods, such as X-ray rulers [8] were suggested for registration. In our approach, position and orientation of the images in space are given and saved with the image-data. Therefore it is not difficult to combine the images with a minimum effort of registration. An application similar to the longbone sequence is taking an image of the whole thorax. There, not only one row of images but a whole matrix of images must be taken and combined in the correct way. It is easy to see that our approach extends to this application naturally. 2.3.2. Intra-surgical CT In some surgeries, 3D-images of bones or other body structures substantially help to get better orientation and control. Acquiring such image data in a standard OR is complicated as a CT is normally not available. With the help of the fluoroscope robot, CT-like 3D-images can now be acquired. For this, the C-arm is rotated around the ROI in small discrete steps in an isocentric movement. In each step a radiograph is taken. The rotation plane can be selected freely within the mechanical limits of the C-arm. A 3D model of the ROI can be

Fig. 5: Collecting radiographs for 3D reconstruction.

calculated with an iterative reconstruction algorithm, e.g. the algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) algorithm [8], in reasonable time. The achieved 3D resolution is sufficient for many diagnostic means and rises with the increasing resolution of the image intensifier. Unlike [10], about 20-50 images are necessary to create a sufficient 3D image of the target. Furthermore, the distance between the ROI and the detector-screen can be varied freely and is not fixed. 3. Results and Future Work Up to now experiments and evaluations were done on a first version of the fully motorized C-arm. The communication is based on a common fieldbus system. A first

version of our software allows for moving the C-arm to specified positions with variable joint speeds. Recent implementation of the repositioning, longbone application, and CT data collection showed promising results. Nevertheless, a compensation of mechanical deformations has to be applied to improve our results for the whole working space. The approach we introduced here should assist the surgeon. Therefore the humanmachine-interface must be very intuitive to prevent mistakes and allow for minimal stress during surgery. For the next generation, the GUI of the simulator has to be optimized for OR usage. A force-torque sensor controlled drive-mode will allow for manual positioning, smooth the movements, and achieve weight compensation for the operator. Emergency couplers have to be integrated to ensure safety and mobility in critical situations like power failures. Further safety issues are discussed and are subject of improvement in future steps. 4.Conclusion In the project presented here, we have solved the inverse kinematic problem for a common fluoroscopic C-arm. This is the basis for many applications which can assist users during everyday work. These applications aim at simplifying the workflow and reducing radiation dose. We successfully evaluated a first selection of applications like repositioning, longbone application and CT-data collection on our C-arm. Further applications were already tested successfully in computer simulation and will be transferred soon. The results will be presented. Next steps will include analysis and implementation of further applications and acquisition of user feedback for improvement. References [1] Siegert HJ. and Bocionek S., Robotik: Programmierung intelligenter Roboter. Springer-Verlag, 1996. [2] Binder N., Matthäus L., Berger A., Schweikard A. “The inverse Kinematics of Fluoroscopic CArms”, Proc. Computer-unterstützte Radiologie und Chirurgie, 2004. [3] Gross R., Binder N., and Schweikard A., “Röntgen-C-Bogen Simulator,” Proc. Computerunterstützte Radiologie und Chirurgie, 2004. [4] Kotsianos D, Rock C, Euler E et. al., 3D-Bildgebung an einem mobilen chirurgischen Bildverstärker (Iso-C 3D): Erste Bildbeispiele zur Frakturdiagnostik an peripheren Gelenken im Vergleich mit Spiral-CT und CT konventioneller Radiologie. Unfallchirurg 2001; 104(9): 834ff [5] Koulechov K., Lüth T., Tita R. “Freie Isozentrik und 3D-Rekonstruktion mit einem Standard CBogen”, atp - Automatisierungstechnische Praxis, 05/2005 [6] Brack C. , Götte H., Gosse F., Moctezuma J. et al., “Towards Accurate X-Ray-Camera Calibration in Computer-Assisted Robotic Surgery,” Proc. Int. Symp. Computer Assisted Radiology (CAR), pp. 721-728, 1996, paris. [7] Brack C., Burgkart R., Czopf A., et al. “Radiological Navigation in Orthopaedic Surgery,” Rechnergestützte Verfahren in Orthopädie und Traumatologie, p 452ff, 1999, steinkopf-Verlag. [8] Yaniv Z. and Joskowicz L., “Long bone panoramas from fluoroscopic x-ray images,” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 23, pp. 26-35, 2004. [9] Toft P., “The Radon transform - Theory and Implementation,” Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Mathematical Modelling, Section for Digital Signal Processing, Technical University of Denmark, 1996. [10] Ritter D., Mitschke M., and Graumann R., “Intraoberative soft tissue 3D reconstruction with a mobile c-arm,” International Congress Series 1256, pp. 200-206, 2003.