Real-time 3D reconstruction for collision avoidance in interventional environments

With the increased presence of automated devices such as C-arms and medical robots and the introduction of a multitude of surgical tools, navigation systems and patient monitoring devices, collision avoidance has become an issue of practical value in interventional environments. In this paper, we present a real-time 3D reconstruction system for interventional environments which aims at predicting collisions by building a 3D representation of all the objects in the room. The 3D reconstruction is used to determine whether other objects are in the working volume of the device and to alert the medical staff before a collision occurs. In the case of C-arms, this allows faster rotational and angular movement which could for instance be used in 3D angiography to obtain a better reconstruction of contrasted vessels. The system also prevents staff to unknowingly enter the working volume of a device. This is of relevance in complex environments with many devices. The recovered 3D representation also opens the path to many new applications utilizing this data such as workflow analysis, 3D video generation or interventional room planning. To validate our claims, we performed several experiments with a real C-arm that show the validity of the approach. This system is currently being transferred to an interventional room in our university hospital.