A Novel Registration Method for Robot-assisted Percutaneous Vertebroplasty

Traditional percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) could induce massive radiation and side injuries to the tissues or nerves around the fractured centrum for an inaccurate route plan. Hence, robot-assisted percutaneous vertebroplasty was gradually adopted to help surgeons give an accurate route plan for PVP. Before the route plan and surgery, it should finish registration first, that is, the relationship of the coordinates system between assisted robot and three-dimension (3-D) reconstruction image of vertebral should be established. In this paper, a novel registration method was proposed for robot-assisted Percutaneous Vertebroplasty. Some targets were affixed near the lesion area of the patient's skin. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) files taken from Computed Tomography (CT) were used to 3-D reconstruct the patient's vertebral and these targets. The relationship of coordinates was established by Helmert transformation with the coordinate values of these targets. Experiments were carried out on a section of sheep's vertebral and the performance was evaluated.