Diagramming registration connectivity and structure [computer-assisted surgery]

Connectivity properties of registration graphs are useful in the study of registration pathways and immobilization requirements of computer-assisted surgery (CAS) systems. They can also be used as a diagrammatic technique for explaining CAS registration strategies and procedures. Several caveats should be observed: the relative technical difficulty of operations represented by the graphs is obscured; the graphs do not address the accuracy of individual measurement operations. At the level of detail shown here, the graphs do not distinguish measurement operations of full rank from those of reduced rank (fewer than six degrees of freedom). The authors know of at least one other way of forming an induced link, besides closing a simultaneous connected subgraph around it. This will be addressed in a subsequent report. Systems graphed here are represented to the best of the authors´ knowledge and inference of their actual procedures. In some cases the authors have had to presume that, for instance, a measurement is established by a coordinate measuring machine, when it may in fact have been established some other way