Medical imaging is an essential component of a wide range of surgical procedures¹. For image guided surgical (IGS) procedures, medical images are the main source of information². The IGS procedures rely largely on obtained image data, so the data needs to provide differentiation between normal and abnormal tissues, especially when other surgical guidance devices are used in the procedures. The image data also needs to provide accurate spatial representation of the patient³. This research has concentrated on the concept of accuracy assessment of IGS devices to meet the needs of quality assurance in the hospital environment. For this purpose, two precision engineered accuracy assessment phantoms have been developed as advanced materials and methods for the community. The phantoms were designed to mimic the volume of a human head as the common region of surgical interest (ROSI). This paper introduces the utilization of the phantoms in spatial accuracy assessment of a commercial surgical 3D CT scanner, the O-Arm. The study presents methods and results of image quality detection of possible geometrical distortions in the region of surgical interest. The results show that in the pre-determined ROSI there are clear image distortion and artefacts using too high imaging parameters when scanning the objects. On the other hand, when using optimal parameters, the O-Arm causes minimal error in IGS accuracy. The detected spatial inaccuracy of the O-Arm with used parameters was in the range of less than 1.00 mm.

Date Published: 15 March 2013
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8671, Medical Imaging 2013: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling, 867129 (15 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2006934

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8671:
Medical Imaging 2013: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling
David R. Holmes III; Ziv R. Yaniv, Editor(s)