Using the Concept of Weighted
Eyal Zadicario, Shlomi Rudich, Ghassan Hamarneh, Daniel Cohen‐Or · 2010
The use of image guidance in medical applications is constantly growing because of its tremendous impact on the future of health care. Although image-based tissue tracking has been thoroughly explored in the academic literature for years, it has not yet matured to become widely accepted by clinicians. Undetected tissue movements in image-based clinical procedures may cause safety and efficacy difficulties. We introduce an image-based approach for detecting tissue movements during clinical procedures. Our method has been validated in more than 600 true clinical cases. The results show that our algorithm agrees with an expert analysis in 98% of the cases, showing zero events of false alarms and zero events of undetected motion. The results show that the approach provides a clinically ready motiondetection algorithm. These robust results are achieved by introducing the concept of weighted directional descriptors (WDDs). The technique analyzes the directivity and confidence level of each anatomical feature and uses it to weight local inputs resulting in a robust motion vector. The robustness is further increased by a novel preprocess that screens out features that may be misleading or are repeated in the adjacent search zone. The technique meets the requirements, as defined by our clinicians, and is now integrated in true medical systems. In particular, our approach has been uniquely developed and