2D and 3D image stabilization for robotic beating heart surgery

Image stabilization is relevant for various industrial and medical applications. In particular, we consider the use of image stabilization in robotic beating heart surgery. A robot, which is remotely controlled by the surgeon, can automatically compensate for the motion of the beating heart. To give the surgeon the illusion of operating on a stationary heart, a stabilized image of the beating heart is shown to the surgeon. Image stabilization cancels the unwanted motion of the heart, but retains changes to color and texture, for example cuts on the heart surface. In this paper, stabilization is first considered as a 2D image transformation problem. Subsequently, it is extended to stabilization of a 3D point cloud or surface. The proposed algorithms are evaluated in both ex-vivo and in-vivo experiments. In the evaluation, the stabilization quality achievable with several common interpolation functions is compared.