Online estimation of the target registration error for n-ocular optical tracking systems

For current surgical navigation systems optical tracking is state of the art. The accuracy of these tracking systems is currently determined statically for the case of full visibility of all tracking targets. We propose a dynamic determination of the accuracy based on the visibility and geometry of the tracking setup. This real time estimation of accuracy has a multitude of applications. For multiple camera systems it allows reducing line of sight problems and guaranteeing a certain accuracy. The visualization of these accuracies allows surgeons to perform the procedures taking to the tracking accuracy into account. It also allows engineers to design tracking setups interactively guaranteeing a certain accuracy. Our model is an extension to the state of the art models of Fitzpatrick et al.[1] and Hoff et al. [2]. We model the error in the camera sensor plane. The error is propagated using the internal camera parameter, camera poses, tracking target poses, target geometry and marker visibility, in order to estimate the final accuracy of the tracked instrument.