Advanced interface for the pre-operative planning in pediatric laparoscopy

The practice of Minimally Invasive Surgery is becoming more and more widespread and is being adopted as an alternative to the classical procedure. This technique presents some limitations for surgeons. In particular, the lack of depth in perception and the difficulty in estimating the distance of the specific structures in laparoscopic surgery can impose limits to delicate dissection or suturing. The presence of new systems for the pre-operative planning can be very useful to the surgeon. In this paper we present an advanced interface for the pre-operative planning of the surgical procedure and the choice of the abdominal access points in pediatric laparoscopy; using the Augmented Reality technology, these points are overlapped on the real patient's body. Two case studies have been considered for the building of 3D models of the patient's organs from the CT images. The developed application allows the surgeon to gather information about the patient and his pathology, visualizing and interacting with the 3D models of the organs built from the patient's medical images, measuring the dimensions of the organs and deciding the best points to insert the trocars in the patient's body.