Advanced Augmented Reality Based Visualization Techniques for Surgery

Within this project, an approach and system for image-guided laparoscopic liver surgery is developed. In a close cooperation with surgeons, engineers and computer scientists, all image-guiding aspects related to laparoscopy are in focus. Thus, the project covers research in navigation technology, medical image processing, interactive visualization as well as augmented reality. In our subproject, we specifically aim at multimodal medical visualization and multimodal data fusion. By incorporating pre- and intraoperative data, we are able to generate a fused data set, which is visualized interactively to support surgeons during liver interventions. The visualization is enhanced such that occlusion-free views to inner lesions become possible without compromising with respect to depth perception. All work is conducted in the context of an existing navigation system, and the final goal are clinical trials of a novel navigation system.