Electromagnetic tracking system assessment

One of my key research ares i intraoperative tracking, and electromegnetic navigation within. Within the frames of an international collaboration we are working on the standardization of EM system assessment protocol. If you are interested to join, let us know!

Intra-operative navigation is the key enabling components of advanced minimally invasive surgical procedures. One of the most  promising  tools  is Electromagnetic Tracking (EMT) that has found its use in various domains. EMT systems ideally provide the sub-millimeter-resolution  position and orientation of small sensor coils—integrated into surgical devices. EMT does not require line-of-sight to the target as opposed to optical tracking, therefore can be used intracavitary. In the mean while, the distortion caused by conductive or ferromagnetic materials (laparoscopic tools, metal trays, operating table, etc.) and other electronic devices leads to a significant reduction in performance. The necessary step towards  the wider use of EMT is  improvement in  tracking  error detection and compensation. Together with our collaborating partners from six institutions in five  countries, we started the development of a unified system assessment protocol. The fundamental aim of the workgroup is to provide guidelines and test cases to repeatable and widely applicable EMT system assessment.
We work  to elaborate a static and a dynamic measurement protocol that describes all important environmental and setup-related conditions, and  can  easily be  repeated  in  other laboratories or at  a clinical site.  General requirements for a widely usable assessment technique are the following:

• simplicity—making the experiment as compact and practical as possible,
• reproducibility—requiring no specific hardware,
• usable for the all types of EMT systems,
• usable for all shapes and sizes of EMT generators,
• providing recommendations for measuring new,currently not available systems and components.

We initiated a research collaboration between various groups to maximize the coverage and the impact of the future protocol.  Current partners include (besides the Budapest Technical University and Economics): 

• German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), 
• PERK lab at Queens University (Ontario, Canada), 
• Children's National Medical Center, (Washington D.C.),
• Dept. of Medical Physics, Medical University of Vienna, 
• Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology (Wiener Neustadt)
• LCSR, Johns Hopkins University. 

The final version of the protocol will consist of a description of  the  complete assessment for static and dynamic, clinical and un-distorted environments as well.You can read more about it in our recent publication at the SCATh workshop, and more publications will follow soon.