Towards direct head navigation for robot-guided Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation using 3D laserscans: Idea, setup and feasibility

Direct tracking is more robust than tracking that is based on additional markers. 3D laser scans can be used for direct tracking because they result in a 3D data set of surface points of the scanned object. For head-navigated robotized systems, it is crucial to know where the patient's head is positioned relatively to the robot. We present a novel method to use a 3D laserscanner for direct head navigation in the robotized TMS system that places a coil on the patient's head using an industrial robot. First experimental results showed a translational error <;; 2mm in the robot hand-eye-calibration with the laserscanner. The rotational error was 0.75° and the scaling error <;; 0.001. Furthermore, we found that the error of a scanned head to a reference head image was <;; 0.2mm using ICP. These results have shown that a direct head navigation is feasible for the robotized TMS system. Additional effort has to be made in future systems to speed up the compution time for real time capability.