Frameworks for Evaluating Accuracy in CAOS

One goal of Computer-Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery is to improve the accuracy with which a given surgical procedure can be performed compared to conventional methods. Improved surgical accuracy can result in improved clinical outcomes, reduced long-term costs and less invasive surgical procedures. However, achieving high accuracy in computer-assisted surgery is a difficult task which requires attention to the technical details of component and system design. There are many potential sources of inaccuracy within a computer-assisted surgical system. A single source of inaccuracy can degrade the performance of the entire system, since inaccuracy in CAOS obeys the adage: “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. Accuracy evaluation of CAOS systems is an important and very challenging technical problem. While component and system inaccuracies can often be characterized in-vitro, it is much more difficult to characterize these inaccuracies under more realistic in-vivo conditions, ideally performed in parallel with actual CAOS procedures.