Plug-in for visualizing 3D tool tracking from videos of Minimally
  Invasive Surgeries
Shubhangi Nema Abhishek Mathur Leena Vachhani
This paper tackles instrument tracking and 3D visualization challenges in
minimally invasive surgery (MIS), crucial for computer-assisted interventions.
Conventional and robot-assisted MIS encounter issues with limited 2D camera
projections and minimal hardware integration. The objective is to track and
visualize the entire surgical instrument, including shaft and metallic clasper,
enabling safe navigation within the surgical environment. The proposed method
involves 2D tracking based on segmentation maps, facilitating creation of
labeled dataset without extensive ground-truth knowledge. Geometric changes in
2D intervals express motion, and kinematics based algorithms process results
into 3D tracking information. Synthesized and experimental results in 2D and 3D
motion estimates demonstrate negligible errors, validating the method for
labeling and motion tracking of instruments in MIS videos. The conclusion
underscores the proposed 2D segmentation technique's simplicity and
computational efficiency, emphasizing its potential as direct plug-in for 3D
visualization in instrument tracking and MIS practices.