Real-Time Image-Guided Telerobotic System Integrating 3D Slicer and the Da Vinci Research Kit

In image-guided surgery, preoperative images are registered to an intraoperative tracking system and thereby provide visual feedback of the position of one or more surgical instruments with respect to the patient anatomy in the preoperative image. Two significant limitations of this approach are that relying on a preoperative image cannot account for registration error or intraoperative changes to the anatomy, and that the navigation system cannot provide mechanical assistance to the surgeon. We propose a system architecture to overcomeboth limitations by incorporating real-time image feedback in a telerobotic system that can provide guidance via virtual fixtures. We describe the implementation of this system, which integrates 3D Slicer and the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), and present a photoacoustic image-guided telerobotic system developed for endonasal skull base surgery as an example application.