Augmented reality based preoperative planning for robot assisted tele-neurosurgery

Robot assisted telesurgery allow the surgeon to deliver the neurosurgical expertise to remote sites by remotely controlling medical robot to do minimally invasive surgery. An augmented reality based preoperative planning method is proposed to improve the safety of tele-neurosurgery. The position of four marks, which are attached on the head of patient and are used for surgeon to do preliminary preoperative planning with the support of sophisticated navigation software, is obtained by stereovision. Besides of the establishment of bilateral audio, video and data communications, the virtual simulation environment is calibrated and overlapped with the real live images. Using the augmented reality, the surgeon at remote site can conduct virtual surgery to find and verify the most appropriate and safest planning and then deliver his planning to surgery site. This method has been successfully applied in clinical cases of tele-neurosurgery.