Enhancing electromagnetic tracking: a hybrid pose calculation algorithm and a novel transmitting coil calibration approach

Abstract Medical electromagnetic tracking technology offers significant benefits in puncture and interventional surgeries by effectively mitigating obstacles. Traditional optimization-based algorithms for pose estimation in electromagnetic localization often converge to local optima and exhibit slow iterative convergence, which limits their accuracy and efficiency. To address these issues, we propose an enhanced pose estimation algorithm that integrates advanced optimization techniques for receiver sensors. The algorithm successfully converged to the global optimal solution in all test cases and no local optimal solution problem occurred in certain volume, which enables rapid real-time tracking of multiple coils simultaneously, outperforming traditional methods. Furthermore, we have developed a novel calibration method for transmission coils that corrects manufacturing-induced errors in size, position, and orientation. These innovations achieved system positional accuracy of 2.64 mm and directional accuracy of 1.33 degrees within a tracking volume of 350 × 350 × 350 mm 3 .