A Novel Augmented Reality Assisted Orthopedic Surgical Robotic System With Bidirectional Surface Registration Algorithms

This paper presents a novel augmented reality (AR)-assisted orthopedic surgical robotic system based on Head-Mounted Display (HMD) devices. The proposed system can overlay the preoperative plans over the patient’s anatomy and provide useful guidance for surgeons during interventions, with integrated calibration and registration components. A novel bi-directional generalised point set registration algorithm that utilises robust features is developed to accurately align the pre-operative CT and intra-operative patient spaces, which has been demonstrated to outperform existing registration methods. The efficacy of the system is both qualitatively and quantitatively assessed with an in vitro study representing a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) procedure. The experimental results showed that 1) the system can successfully align the preoperative and intraoperative spaces, with the mean target registration error (TRE) being <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.78 \; \pm \; 2.51$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm; 2) the models can be properly overlaid to the physical scenarios with the mean AR visualization accuracy being <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$6.97 \; \pm \; 1.57$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm.