Endoscopic laser treatment system for intrauterine fetal surgery

Fetal surgery aims to stop progression of congenital disease and to protect fetus from disorders by therapy before birth. Although endoscopic approach is minimally invasive, it has some difficulties. In order to solve the problems, we develop a laser treatment system for fetal surgery. Endoscope steers a laser beam transmitted coaxially to a target point selected on the endoscopic image and tracks the target movement. The tracking algorithm is constructed for an endoscopic view which is narrow and includes motion blur and floating particles. The tracking system achieves realtime processing, and detects a large mistracking to avoid irradiating a wrong point. This system improves the safety of fetal surgery.