Beveled needle position and pose estimation based on optical coherence tomography in ophthalmic microsurgery

The needle position and pose is essential information in ophthalmic microsurgery. Estimation of these parameters is still an open problem, which hinders the application of various robot-assisted surgeries, such as autonomous injection. This paper presents a method to estimate the position and pose of beveled needle using three-dimensional Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) image cube. The incomplete 3D point cloud of beveled needle obtained from OCT image cube is used to reconstruct the needle by fitting the projection of needle points based on its geometric features. We demonstrate the applicability of our method in ophthalmic injection surgery using ex vivo pig eyes and evaluate the accuracy of position and pose information using a micromanipulator.