Systems and methods for verification of fiducial correspondence during image-guided surgical procedures

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for use in image-guided surgical procedures, in which intraoperatively acquired surface data is employed to verify the correspondence between intraoperatively selected fiducial points and volumetric fiducial points, where the volumetric fiducial points are selected based on volumetric image data. Segmented surface data obtained from the volumetric image data is registered to the intraoperative surface data using the intraoperative and volumetric fiducial points for initial surface alignment, and this process is repeated for other permutations of the correspondence between the intraoperatively fiducial points and the volumetric fiducial points. Quality measures may be determined that relate to the registration quality for each fiducial correspondence permutation, where the quality measures may be employed to assess of the likelihood that the initially prescribed fiducial correspondence is correct. A graphical representation may be generated for visually displaying the alignment of the registered surfaces for the different fiducial correspondence permutations.