The Use of Super Resolution in Robotic Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

In minimally invasive surgery, a small field-of-view is often required for achieving a large magnification factor during micro-scale tasks such as coronary anastomosis. Constant change of the orientation and focal length of the laparoscope camera, however, is cumbersome and can impose extra visual and cognitive load to the operating surgeon in realigning the visual pathways and anatomical landmarks. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of fixational movements for robotic assisted minimal invasive surgery such that the perceived resolution of the foveal field-of-view is greater than the intrinsic resolution of the laparoscope camera. The proposed technique is based on super resolution imaging using projection onto convex sets. Validation with both phantom and in vivo data from totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass surgery is provided.