Applications of Image Processing in Laparoscopic Surgeries

Abstract

Laparoscopy is a minimally-invasive surgery using a few small incisions on the patient's body to insert the tools and telescope and conduct the surgical operation. Laparoscopic video processing can be used to extract valuable knowledge and help the surgeons. We discuss the present and possible future role of processing laparoscopic videos. The various applications are categorized for image processing algorithms in laparoscopic surgeries including preprocessing video frames by laparoscopic image enhancement, telescope related applications (telescope position estimation, telescope motion estimation and compensation), surgical instrument related applications (surgical instrument detection and tracking), soft tissue related applications (soft tissue segmentation and deformation tracking) and high level applications such as safe actions in laparoscopic videos, summarization of laparoscopic videos, surgical task recognition and extracting knowledge using fusion techniques. Some different methods have been proposed previously for each of the mentioned applications using image processing.