Automatic identification of needle´s entrance point and angle in Vertebroplasty

Vertebral compression fracture (VCF) is a disease which affects the body of vertebrae usually due to osteoporosis or trauma. Vertebroplasty is a common therapeutic procedure to treat VCF. In Vertebroplasty, bone cement is injected into the body of fractured vertebra through the hollow needle via skin path. To do this, physicians insert the needle into the body experimentally guided by medical images. Proper and precise needle insertion is mandatory to avoid damage of sensitive structures such as spinal cord or nerve roots. In this paper, we propose an automatic approach to detect the needle´s entrance point and its 3D direction using only the CT images of the patient. The results obtained by our approach have been validated by specialists and the approach can be used clinically.