An enhanced hybrid tracking-mosaicking approach for surgical view expansion.

The aim of this work is to overcome the narrow surgical field of view problem in minimally invasive surgery. We achieve this by combining multiple views of the camera-retractable trocar which can obtain surgical viewpoints different from laparoscopic view. However, the accuracy and time are essential factors in this process. Therefore, we tend to improve the accuracy of a hybrid tracking-mosaicking approach which can combine several views at high speed. Two improvements are presented and analyzed here. The first improvement utilizes two sharping methodologies to enhance the image quality. This enhancement, in turn, improves the interest point extraction process and increases the number of extracted points. In the second enhancement, the tracking accuracy is improved by applying a filtering methodology to select the set of valid flow vectors only. This process reduces the tracking error which may accumulate during tracking. The experimental evaluation, shows that these improvements enhance the final mosaicking accuracy and allows us to construct a more accurate expanded view.