Generative Localization With Uncertainty Estimation Through Video-CT Data for Bronchoscopic Biopsy

Robot-assisted endobronchial intervention requires accurate localization based on both intra- and pre-operative data. Most existing methods achieve this by registering 2D videos with 3D CT models according to a defined similarity metric with local features. Instead, we formulate the bronchoscopic localization as a learning-based global localisation using deep neural networks. The proposed network consists of two generative architectures and one auxiliary learning component. The cycle generative architecture bridges the domain variance between the real bronchoscopic videos and virtual views derived from pre-operative CT data so that the proposed approach can be trained through a large number of generated virtual images but deployed through real images. The auxiliary learning architecture leverages complementary relative pose regression to constrain the search space, ensuring consistent global pose predictions. Most importantly, the uncertainty of each global pose is obtained through variational inference by sampling within the learned underlying probability distribution. Detailed validation results demonstrate the localization accuracy with reasonable uncertainty achieved and its potential clinical value. A demonstration video demo can be found on the website https://youtu.be/ci9LMY49aF8.