Self-acting Coronary Artery Identification in Endoscopic Heart Surgery

The benefits of minimally invasive cardiac surgery are manifold, including less trauma to tissue and consequently less pain, shorter hospital stay and faster recovery. Nevertheless problems remain in the complex operative procedure with long instruments and small aditus to the operating field. In coronary artery bypass graft operations the exact identification of the target artery on the heart surface in an endoscopic or minimally invasive incision, respectively, persists complex. The combined presentation of the real endoscopic camera view and additional preoperative diagnostic images (e. g. coronary angiography) in one augmentedreality-model facilitates the identification and classification of the coronary arteries on the heart surface. We present a novel approach which combines several advanced techniques into a single tool allowing real-time augmentation of endoscopic beating heart image sequences with the corresponding angiogram assisting the surgeon in classifying the arteries rapidly and reliably.