Single Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILS) reduces
the trauma of large wounds decreasing the post-operative infections,
but introduces technical difficulties for the surgeon, who has
to deal with at least three instruments in a single incision. These
drawbacks can be overcome with the introduction of robotic
arms inside the abdominal cavity, but still remain difficulties in
the surgical field vision, limited by the endoscope field of view.
This work is aimed at developing a system to improve the information
required by the surgeon and enhance the vision during
a robotic SILS. In the pre-operative phase, the segmentation and
surface rendering of organs allow the surgeon to plan the surgery.
During the intra-operative phase, the run-time information (tools
and endoscope pose) and the pre-operative information (3D
models of organs) are combined in a virtual environment. A
point-based rigid registration of the virtual abdomen on the real
patient creates a connection between reality and virtuality. The
camera-image plane calibration allows to know at run-time the
pose of the endoscopic view.
The results show how using a small set of 4 points (the minimal
number of points that would be used in a real procedure) for the
camera-image plane calibration and for the registration between
real and virtual model of the abdomen, is enough to provide a
calibration/registration accuracy within the requirements
