Systems and methods for tracking a position of a robotically-manipulated surgical instrument

A surgical instrument tracking system comprising:

• a memory storing instructions;
• a processor communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to:
• determine, based on endoscopic imagery of a surgical area and using a trained neural network, an observation for an object of interest depicted in the endoscopic imagery;
• determine a probability of an association of the observation to a robotically-manipulated surgical instrument located at the surgical area based on kinematics of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument;
• associate, based on the probability, the observation for the object of interest to the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument or to a false positive designation;
• when the observation for the object of interest is associated with the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument, determine a physical position of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument at the surgical area by adjusting a kinematic-based position of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument based on an image-based position of the observation associated with the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument;
• and
• when the observation for the object of interest is associated with the false positive designation, refrain from using the observation to determine the physical position of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument at the surgical area.

A method comprising:

• determining, by a surgical instrument tracking system, based on imagery of a surgical area, an observation for an object of interest depicted in the imagery;
• determining, by the surgical instrument tracking system, a probability of an association of the observation to a robotically-manipulated surgical instrument located at the surgical area based on kinematics of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument;
• associating, by the surgical instrument tracking system, the observation for the object of interest to the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument based on the probability;
• and
• determining, by the surgical instrument tracking system, a physical position of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument at the surgical area based on the kinematics of the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument and the observation associated with the robotically-manipulated surgical instrument.