Real time endoscope trajectory tracking in the 3D space using MEMS sensors

Colonoscopy is one of most widely used screening procedures conducted for detection colon cancers. Nevertheless, since the procedure is extremely uncomfortable, willingness to have a colonoscopy is very low. The endoscope looping, which is a common occurrence during colonoscopy procedures can cause severe pain to the patients. The detection of endoscope looping is difficult just from the feel of the endoscope, because of the endoscope stiffness and the high tension developed in the twisted endoscope inside the colon. The occurrence of Endoscope looping can be detected or prevented if the surgeon has sufficient spatial and orientation information of the endoscope. Hence, our goal is to develop a technique to track the three dimensional representation of the endoscope and develop a navigational aid for the surgeon to guide the colonoscopy. We used 8 inertial sensor systems, which are small enough to incorporate into the endoscope tube at predetermined locations. Then the firmware platform gathers data from these systems in real time. The data gathered from sensor systems are processed and fused to form a complete orientation description of sensor modules in 3D space. The processed orientation data is then sent to the PC and the Software application we developed interpolates the sent data in order to get the real time 3D visualization of the Endoscope. The developed prototype was tested using a model phantom. After testing for accuracy between the real shape and the calculated shape from our method we found out that the shape very closely resembles the real shape, quantitatively