An interactive augmented reality imaging system for minimally invasive orthopedic surgery

In orthopedic surgery, it is important for physicians to completely understand the three-dimensional bone structure for several procedures. To achieve this goal, it is required to image the patient several times using C-arm scanner from different positions during the surgery. This procedure is time consuming and increase the x-ray dose given to both patient and physician. In this paper, we propose an augmented reality imaging system for minimally invasive orthopedic surgery. The system is based on mapping the x-ray image to the real object such that the number of x-ray shots during the surgery can be significantly reduced. We consider two imaging scenarios that can fit with different cases. Results obtained through clinical data indicate that the proposed approach has a potential usefulness in real applications.