Offset Calculation for Registration-Free EM-based Liver Navigation

Precise placement of ablation needles for the treatment of liver tumors remains difficult due to poor visibility of potential tumor targets in ultrasound imaging. Various groups have carried out extensive efforts to develop image-guidance and surgical navigation technology for the realm of oncologic liver surgery. Due to additional complexity and disruption in the clinical workflow, the barriers to introducing these systems on a larger clinical level remains high. In this work we present an initial evaluation towards a novel and simple method for accurate image-guided targeting of liver tumors based on EM-tracking and with-out requiring patient-to-image registration. The initial feasibility of the 3D offset calculation from fluoroscopy images is demonstrated.