Particle filtering in the Hough space for instrument tracking.

In this paper we present a real-time tracking system of surgical instruments in laparoscopic operations. We combine Condensation tracking, with the Hough Transform in order to obtain an efficient and accurate tracking. The Condensation algorithm performs well in heavy clutter, and the Hough Transform is robust under illumination changes, occlusion and distractions. The Hough array is computed using the gradient direction image obtained by means of a Principal Component Analysis. This improves accuracy in the determination of edge orientation and speeds up computation of the Hough Transform. The experiments on image sequences of actual laparoscopic surgical operations show that the instrument tip is located even in the presence of smoke, occlusions or motion blurring.