Work

Fluoroscopic Shape and Pose Tracking of Catheters With Custom Radiopaque Markers

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Safe navigation of steerable and robotic catheters in the cerebral vasculature requires awareness of the catheter's shape and pose. Currently, a significant perception burden is placed on interventionalists to mentally reconstruct and predict catheter motions from biplane fluoroscopy images. Efforts to track these catheters are limited to planar segmentation or bulky sensing instrumentation, which are incompatible with microcatheters used in neurointervention. In this work, a catheter is equipped with custom radiopaque markers arranged to enable simultaneous shape and pose estimation under biplane fluoroscopy. A design measure is proposed to guide the arrangement of these markers to minimize sensitivity to marker tracking uncertainty. This approach was deployed for microcatheters ($\leq \phi 2\rm {mm}$) navigating phantom vasculature with shape tracking errors$< $1mm and catheter roll errors$< 40^{\circ }$. This work can enable steerable catheters to autonomously navigate under biplane imaging.

Source: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

DOI: 10.1109/lra.2025.3581043

Authors: Jared Lawson, Rohan Chitale, Nabil Simaan

Institutions: Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Language: English

Topic: Medical Image Segmentation Techniques

Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,645

Funders: Vanderbilt University, National Institutes of Health