Catheter localization for vascular interventional robot with conventional single C-arm

Usually image correction and system calibration are basic tasks for using conventional XRII C-arm to navigate medical robot in surgery. In traditional way, they are separated as two steps. In this paper, we look upon C-arm as a non-linear camera, thus it is calibrated with non-linear camera model. After calibration, the C-arm image can be corrected with the camera distortion model. The special calibration phantom design and the technique for automatic calibration are addressed. For vessel reconstruction and catheter localization, epipolar geometry constraint plays an important role in searching for corresponding point. We present a technique to find the epipolar constraint automatically. With epipolar, the vessel and catheter are reconstructed. At last, these techniques are applied to a VIR. The experiment results show that it is valid to locate catheter.