Development of Surgical Navigation System for Less Invasive Therapy of Intervertebral Disk Disease

Abstract

Epiduroscopy (EDS) is an emerging branch of less invasive treatment of chronic back pain and lumber herniated intervertebral disc disease. However, the EDS leads to X-ray radiation exposure and contrast agent-induced nephrotoxicity, since it is usually performed under the guidance of fluoroscopy. In this regard, We propose a new surgical navigation system for the EDS, which uses an electromagnetic tracking system (EMTS) and an optical tracking system (OTS) in a complementary way to compensate for inherent tacking inaccuracy of the EMTS and finally improve the navigation accuracy. The proposed system aims at replacing the conventional fluoroscopy to reduce the radiation doses and providing 3D visual information to help sur-geons more easily understand the surgical situation. For further improvement in the navigation accuracy of the proposed system, correction for magnetic field distortion based on the polynomial fitting technique are also studied. The phantom experiments were performed to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of the pro-posed system and qualitative assessment was also performed with clinical application of the system over 14 patients. ⓒ 2014 DGIST