Pico Lantern: a pick-up projector for augmented reality in laparoscopic surgery.

The Pico Lantern is proposed as a new tool for guidance in laparoscopic surgery. Its miniaturized design allows it to be picked up by a laparoscopic tool during surgery and tracked directly by the endoscope. By using laser projection, different patterns and annotations can be projected onto the tissue surface. The first explored application is surface reconstruction. The absolute error for surface reconstruction using stereo endoscopy and untracked Pico Lantern for a plane, cylinder and ex vivo kidney is 2.0 mm, 3.0 mm and 5.6 mm respectively. The absolute error using a mono endoscope and a tracked Pico Lantern for the same plane, cylinder and kidney is 0.8mm, 0.3mm and 1.5mm respectively. The results show the benefit of the wider baseline produced by tracking the Pico Lantern. Pulsatile motion of a human carotid artery is also detected in vivo. Future work will be done on the integration into standard and robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery.