The Future of Endoscopic Navigation: A Review of Advanced Endoscopic Vision Technology

Minimally invasive medicine has become mainstream because of its crucial clinical significance in providing a low risk of postoperative complications, limited blood loss, short postoperative recovery time, and small sizes of associated physiological tissue wounds. Endoscopic navigation systems comprise a research hot spot in medical science and technology and are an essential means to achieve precision medicine and improve surgical operation safety. As a core component in endoscopic navigation during minimally invasive surgery, endoscopes play a critical role in disease diagnosis and treatment. The development of endoscopic vision technologies has resulted in a renewed drive to further develop endoscopic navigation systems. Multiple endoscopic optical imaging modalities provide data sources for endoscopic vision technology, including white-light endoscopy, contrast-enhanced imaging and technologies involving magnified observation. Endoscopic vision is a specific application of computer vision involving the use of endoscopes that include instrument tracking, endoscopic view expansion, and suspicious lesion tracking in the application of endoscopic navigation. These techniques help surgeons or surgical robots locate instruments and lesions and expand the field of view of the endoscope. Although these technologies have been applied to various clinical and pre-clinical diagnoses and treatments, the use and combination of these advanced technologies in endoscopic navigation system for specific clinical requirements remains challenging. This review performs a broad survey of advanced endoscopic vision technologies and their application in endoscopic navigation systems. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future directions in implementing and developing endoscopic navigation systems.