Navigation Wand Project

Objective

The objective of this project is to develop a hand held navigation wand to assist in physicians to align the needle holder to the optimal needle insertion path planned from the pre-procedural images. The wand will is essentially a needle holder with a tracking sensor (Aurora EM sensor AND video camera based tracking mentioned below) connected to a on-board linux card with open-igt link I/O. The unique (and original) feature of the wand is its feedback interfaces, ie. sound, vibration, light, embedded in it. We will validate the utility of these sensors and find the optimal combination of feedback methods.

Tracking sensor

• Simplest ===> gyroscope
• Aurora EM sensor
• Webcam-based tracking
  • Per Dr. Kikinis's strong recommendation, the wand will be equipped with camera based tracking using Web-cam. The Web cam can be isight in Apple notebooks. We will use open CV extensively to enable web-cam based tracking.

Feedback interfaces

• Vibration (will use ones used for cell phones)
• LED light (will use ring LEDs)
• Sound (will use mini speakers)

Tasks

• November
  • Prototype using Wii (sound, vibration, light as feedback, gyroscope as "tracking" sensor")
  • Demonstration, validation to decide the optimal combination of feed backs.
• December
  • Prototype with gyroscope, linux board for I/O, open-igt link. Feedback method of choice found above
  • Test and validate
  • Prototype with customized casing (designed and fabricated by Sam Song)

Reporting duty

• Report update here
• Meet and show progress to Drs. Hata and Kikinis at SNR lab meeting (Wednesday 3pm)
• Project shall we over by end of December

Purchasing

• P/O for ordering has to be out by end of November
• coordinate purchasing with Sam Song and Ehsan Azmi