A high resolution bladder wall map: Feasibility study

The aim of this work is to provide the surgeon-urologist with a system for automatic 2D and 3D-reconstruction of the bladder wall to help him within the treatment of bladder cancer as well as planning and documentation of the interventions. Within this small pilot-framework a fast feasibility study was made to clear if it is generally possible to build a bladder wall model using a special endoscope with an embedded laser-based distance measurement, an optical navigation system and modern image stitching techniques. Some experiments with a realistic bladder phantom have shown that this initial concept is generally acceptable and can be used with some extensions to build a system which can provide an automatic bladder wall reconstruction in real time to be used within a surgical intervention.