Colibri5: Real-Time Monocular 5-DoF Trocar Pose Tracking for Robot-Assisted Vitreoretinal Surgery

Retinal surgery is a complex medical procedure that requires high precision dexterity to perform delicate instrument maneuvers with sub-millimeter accuracy. Minimizing the manual tremor and achieving precise and repeatable execution of surgical tasks has motivated the development of robotic platforms to overcome the limitations of manual surgery. However, specific tasks, such as instrument insertion through the trocar, are more challenging in robotic surgery than in conventional manual procedures since the robot control is often optimized for navigation inside the eye. This challenges the integration of robotic systems, creating a high cognitive load on the operator and prolonging the surgery time. Moreover, misalignment of the robot’s remote center of motion (RCM) and trocar position during the procedure can lead to excessive forces between the instrument and the trocar, potentially causing patient trauma. Precise and rapid localization of the trocars enables the automation of the insertion procedure and dynamic compensation of eye motion.In this work, we present a real-time marker-less method for 3D pose tracking of trocar, achieved with only a single monocular camera. Our experiments show promising results towards real-time trocar pose estimation and tracking, achieving an average error of 3^◦ in trocar orientation estimation, with an average processing time of 15 fps. This could serve as a foundation to improve robotic systems’ automation, integration, and efficiency of robotic systems for retinal surgery. The dataset created for this work is made publicly available.