A Convenient Method of Video See-through Augmented Reality Based on Image-guided Surgery System

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology which is widely used in medical area, especially in surgery room. In many cases, cumbersome equipments or complicated algorithm are introduced to establish the whole system, which would make it inefficient and unsuitable for surgery environment. This paper presents a convenient method for video see-through augmented reality on the basis of existing image-guided surgery system developed by our research center. We describe the prototype of the system, the registration of virtual objects in a marker coordinate system, and the motion tracking of the Head Mounted Display (HMD) using ARToolKit. Finally, we present the experiment results which show that the proposed AR technology can provide augmented information for the surgeons and work well with existing image-guided surgery system.