An optical projection system with mirrors for laparoscopy

We propose an optical projection system aimed at improving laparoscopic surgery based on three-dimensional (3D) measurement that gives an effective information for robotic-assisted surgery and computer-aided surgery. Laparoscopic surgery, which involves the creation of small ports through the patient’s body for the laparoscope and surgical instruments, such as clamp, is minimally invasive and has generated a growing interest. There are techniques using the stereo laparoscope to obtain depth information. Active sensing when structured light is added to the laparoscope can reconstruct a 3D shape. However, active sensing that requires projection devices for the structured light leads to an increase in size. Large-sized projection and sensing systems affect surgical procedures. The size of the system is also larger than the size of port for the laparoscope. To remove the obstacle for the surgery, it is important to design downsized systems. For active sensing with the structured light, a small-size projection system is required to use a small port for the laparoscope. Therefore, we built the optical projection system toward downsizing the device to stereoscopic vision of the laparoscope using mirrors, and we show a new shape reconstruction method from its active sensing. Our Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed system and method.